Loyalty
by Jennifer Wand
Summary: COMPLETED 1031. AU fic: Eiri's and Shuichi's story set in the era of the samurai. The story is based on passages from the Hagakure, the book of the samurai, and the themes of the conflict between obligation, and personal feeling. And it's a love story.
1. Smashing Blue

Loyalty  
by Jennifer A. Wand  
a Gravitation fan fiction  
  
  
I. Smashing Blue  
  
"[Saburazaemon said:] 'To lay down one's life for another is the basic principle of homosexuality.'"   
  
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai  
  
  
  
Eiri shifted in his saddle and gave his horse a prod with the inside of his heel. It was hot, and he was tired. His eyes, already bleary from the ride and the red glare of sunset, stung with dripping sweat from his brow. His helmet felt heavy.  
  
As though echoing his weariness, his horse gave a plaintive little whinny and stopped to gaze at him through the corner or a soulful brown eye. "Don't give me that look, Tatsuha," Eiri grumbled, spurring the handsome black steed onward again. "A little further and we can both rest."  
  
He didn't blame the beast for its unwillingness to move. They had been riding since dawn, trying to make it past the seemingly endless mountain ridge back to the castle town he thought of as home. Never mind that it had been months since he'd last seen it, that he was seldom there for more than a few weeks at a time. There was always a new campaign to be waged, a new threat for the east or the north, and the lord he served seemed almost unnaturally dependent on him. Always it was Eiri-san this, Eiri-san that, Eiri-san why don't you go ahead and try to feel out the opposing forces. All this from a foppish noble who spent half his time dealing with childish musicians and artists. It was as though, through him, Lord Seguchi was living vicariously as the samurai he had gone too soft to continue being. It all disgusted Eiri, but he had his loyalty. Sometimes that seemed like all he had.  
  
At last, torchlights came into view distant on the horizon, and the familiar lines of the castle rose up before him. Tatsuha whinnied in relief, and Eiri echoed him with a sigh - though they'd passed the truly difficult mountain passages, the terrain had been rocky and unstable for hours now, and they were both sore with the effects of stumbling into rocks and hidden crags. Eiri daydreamed about sake and a bath as he rode ever closer to the gates of the castle town.  
  
As usual, it was a lively place. Women bustled about carrying jugs of sake or small children or more interesting bundles still; tethered horses spat and sneered at the taunts of boys; smoke rose in thick tufts from lines of gray, squatting houses. Proudly eclipsing the setting sun sat the castle, the crown of a slight hill, the scalloped edges of its roof curtseying gracefully (if a trifle condescendingly) at him. Tatsuha shook himself impatiently as Eiri dismounted and shrugged off his helmet with equal speed. No doubt they were both glad to be free of the extra weight.  
  
It would be a bother to return to the castle. There would be an official audience with Seguchi which would be tiresome at best, painful at worst, and it would be long before he was able to relax in the comfort of the palace room reserved for him. That bath and cup of sake seemed far away. As though trying to avoid reaching that final hurdle, Eiri slowed down, trudging Tatsuha through the streets at a pace so deliberate that the horse hoofed the ground in annoyance. Here in the town there was a stronger breeze than on the plain, and Eiri was far more comfortable. He briefly wished he could walk toward the castle forever without ever reaching it.  
  
A particularly strong gust of wind blew up dust around Eiri's face, and he shielded his eyes. Tatsuha whinnied uncomfortably and stamped the dust with his black hooves. When the air cleared, Eiri slitted his eyes open and immediately saw a scrap of parchment fluttering past him. Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed it. Still-damp ink blotted the page.  
  
In the nervous town  
Bustling with the moving crowd  
I see you: time, stop!  
  
The final character was blurred nearly beyond recognition, as though the author had let the pen linger too long before lifting it.  
  
A thin voice rang out. "Wait--!!" As anxious footsteps sounded ever-closer, Eiri turned as if in a dream. The sounds of the town faded away. Somehow, the world seemed to blur around the center of his vision: a girl, in a kimono so startlingly pink that it seemed to have been dipped in blooms, running toward him with a look of sheer terror on her face. She was gangly, somehow not delicate enough to suit the clothes she wore, but her lips were rounded in mid-shout and her eyes were almost unearthly in their blue tint. Eiri had heard of foreigners with blue eyes, but this was the first he'd seen a pair. His own eyes, with their flecks of amber and green, were odd to begin with. But these eyes, so open and round and blue, seemed to draw him in.  
  
He shook himself, wondering vaguely if he was ill or lightheaded with fatigue, and faced the girl. She had stopped short at the sight of him carrying the scrap of writing, and was gaping wide-eyed and open-mouthed at him. A bit of color crept into her cheeks.   
  
"Is this yours?" he spoke brusquely. Tatsuha nudged him from behind, but Eiri ignored him.  
  
The girl's blush deepened. "Y... yes. It's... a poem."  
  
"It's clumsy," Eiri said, fixing the girl in place with a keen stare. There was something about that shocked look that he liked. "It's barely a poem at that. I'd expect better from a five-year-old."  
  
At this, the girl's face contorted into a scowl. Her eyes flashed as though they would leap out and crush him, violent eyes of smashing blue. It was such a peculiar expression, and so out of place above such a lovely figure, that Eiri almost wanted to laugh. Instead, he released his grip on the scrap of parchment and let it flutter off again. As the girl dove for it, he pulled on Tatsuha's reins and started to walk on.  
  
When he was nearly gone, Eiri suddenly heard the same thin voice cry out after him. "You didn't have to say all that!!!"  
  
It occurred to Eiri briefly that the way the voice cracked sounded somehow false - like a falsetto, or the girlish voice affected by stylish women. But he walked on.  
  
  
  
Seguchi Tohma was waiting in the courtyard of the castle when Eiri arrived. No doubt some page crawling about town, serving as his eyes, had alerted him to Eiri's return. Now, he sat atop the wooden deck surrounding the castle proper, surveying Eiri through slitted eyes. Eiri knew the look, even from his prostrated position on the ground. He had seen it many a time. Seguchi bade him rise, and Eiri sat up, still in the devotional posture indicating his loyalty lay here.  
  
"It is good to have you back, Eiri-san." Seguchi began in that catlike, smooth voice that always hinted of an ulterior motive. Eiri did his best not to speculate on what that motive might be. "We are honored to have a samurai from the famed Uesugi clan blessing us with his strength."  
  
Eiri nearly choked on the snicker that fought to rise in his throat. Always, always! Would Seguchi ever let that pretense go? First of all, Seguchi knew best of all that Eiri did not go by the name of Uesugi any longer. Second, if he wanted a tie to the Uesugi family, Seguchi already had one sitting by his side: his wife, Mika, as noble and high-born a lady as anyone could desire. No. Seguchi had but one motive in mind for saying such a thing: he was reminding Eiri of his place. Of the power he held over him, not just as a lord to whom he owed loyalty, but as a man who held Eiri's deepest secrets in the palm of his hand. Eiri scowled darkly.  
  
"I beg your Lordship's indulgence," he spoke up, formally but flatly. "I regret to admit I am tired from my journey, and I would like to rest." Eiri envied Tatsuha briefly. He got back home and was immediately taken to his stable, without having to endure a long ceremonious welcome. Oh, to be a horse without a care.  
  
"Of course, of course." Seguchi smiled in that same catty manner. "Your room is prepared for you." He clapped his hands and an attendant came forth, bowing all the way. Eiri stod up briskly to follow her.   
  
Seguchi, seeing his toy was about to leave, fought like a spoilt child to keep his fun from ending. "Shall I send up anything to help you relax, Eiri-san? Food? Sake? A woman?"  
  
"Yes, yes, yes!" Eiri snapped, trying to silence that pestering voice. It was only later that he realized what he'd agreed to. In later days, he would think ruefully, :well, I asked for it...:  
  
  
  
  
The room was somewhat quiet, although the court still bustled about behind the fluttering of paper doors. Nevertheless, Eiri felt at peace. At least here, there was no Touma throwing pale compliments laced with innuendo like poisoned wine. And his bones ached from the ride, and from sitting upright in the formal position as he dodged the rain of flattery from the daimyo. Now, alone, dressed in a loose gray robe, he relaxed, leaning his head against the wall and letting out a groan. At long last, at rest, and alone.  
  
Whether Eiri dozed or not he couldn't tell. He only knew that his next conscious thought was an awareness of a sound, a tapping that was more a scratch to his ears. He looked over at the paper door, rubbing bleary eyes (perhaps he had dozed after all). There was a definite presence there, a slight shadow on the paper panels. Eiri uttered, "Come," and the door slid open.   
  
Savory smells assaulted him. A woman, head bowed to the ground, was kneeling there submissively, proferring a tray of food and sake with outspread arms. Silently, she slid it forward. Eiri took the tray and, wordlessly, turned back, listening with comfort to the sound of the door sliding shut and leaving him once more in solitude.   
  
It was half a bowl of rice later that Eiri realized he wasn't alone after all. A sort of prickling sensation ran up the back of his neck and the tiny shallow arc of the sake cup trembled briefly in his hand. A few drops of dull amber sake stained the mat beneath him.  
  
Slowly, barely moving a muscle, Eiri slid his eyes sideways. The corner of the room came into view. Then, the sliding door... a door that, Eiri realized with a sinking shudder, was open. In the back of his mind, he came to the realization that he'd never heard that final click of the door shutting, but had attrituted it to the maid's natural stealth. One learned to be silent and invisible in the service of a lord like Seguchi, not only because he demanded it, but because he was a dangerous man to annoy. But now Eiri saw the door had never shut. He turned, achingly slow, muscles straining to just whip around in one sure motion. His heart began to pound. How was it that he had let this take him by surprise. Had his battle-trained reflexes gone that loose at the presence of food and wine? Walls of frustration hardened around his heart.  
  
The sliding door was, in fact, open. And holding it open was a pair of delicate hands, lily-colored and small, one fist wrapped around the smooth wood surface of the door's edge on either side. Between those hands, which connected to bent arms in flowing purple, was a face. It was the maid who had brought Eiri his meal. She remained in a position of respect, kneeling just outside the open doorway, but there was one difference. She was staring straight at him. And the furrow of her brow, over flashing, enraged eyes, shocked Eiri into stillness. Dumbly, he answered the glare.  
  
Color rose to the maid's cheeks when Eiri's eyes fixed on her, and it was then that he realized who she was. The flushed cheeks and kimono the color of overripe asters, the anger in the expression - he had seen them before.  
  
In town.  
  
  
In the nervous town--  
  
(nigiyaka na  
hitokomi ni anata  
toki tomete)  
  
  
~~~  
  
NOTES:  
  
1) You may think what I've done to Shuichi is unforgivable. Give it another two chapters, please.  
  
2) Tohma isn't kidding: there was, in fact, a famous samurai whose name was Uesugi Kenshin (great name, ne?) But I only took one semester of Culture of the Samurai, so if my details are spotty, I'm sorry!  
  
3) Each chapter is named after (and features, somewhere in the story) the ttle of a song from the Gravitation TV or OAV series. This one was Smashing Blue - did you see the song title in the story?  
  
~~~~  
  
To Be Continued. 


	2. Glaring Dream

Loyalty  
by Jennifer A. Wand  
a Gravitation fan fiction  
  
II. Glaring Dream  
  
"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succesion of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment."  
  
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai  
  
  
Eiri swallowed.  
  
He blinked.  
  
He ruffled his fingers through his hair nervously - the only outward expression of uneasiness he'd allow, though his insides were churning. The face looking at him was one he'd seen before -- in a crowded street, in a moment when the world had isolated Eiri and thsi girl in a world all their own. It had seemed like a dream. And now here was that same face, a glaring dream in the doorway radiating the same anger and loveliness that struck him the first time they'd met. Eiri was dumbfounded. He hadn't been expecting to face anyone for another several hours. And now he was stuck, fixed in the exacting stare of the stranger, somehow even more ill at ease than he had been in Seguchi's court.  
  
Hair began to bristle on Eiri's back. Why was he being glared at like this? It was his time to relax, to steal a few moments of privacy and quiet, and instead he found himself sized up and damned by a glare as powerful as any warrior's. The girl's eyes spit fire at him in little green sparks. Eiri's muscles tightened.   
  
"And what's your problem?" he finally said, low and growling.  
  
The answer to his deliberate, drawling words came out high-pitched and uneven. "I should be asking you that!" the girl burst out in that same false-sounding, thin soprano. "Do you have something against me?"   
  
Eiri leaned back, willing his tensed muscles to relax, and took his bowl of rice in hand again. "Should I?" he said noncommitally.   
  
"You don't remember!?" Her voice escalated in pitch.  
  
"Is that the way you talk to someone you're serving?" Eiri raised an eyebrow. The tone of her voice and her increasingly pink face seemed comical. "You'd better learn some manners if you want Seguchi to even look at those poems of yours."  
  
All color drained from the girl's cheeks in a flash. "You-- you said you didn't remember."  
  
"I lied, stupid." Eiri munched on rice, waving an errant chopstick at her as he chided her. "How could I forget a terrible poem like that?"  
  
"But that's just it!" Energy returned to the girl in another moment. Eiri felt his interest rise. This was one amusing maid -- even if her talent as an artist was spotty. And with such predictable reactions and volatile moods, she was fun. Eiri also found that he thought her attractive - while she was too gangly and unfeminine to be called beautiful, there was a healthy shine to her that enticed him. His own fatigue dropped away. ::If only..:: he thought suddenly, and suppressed the rest.  
  
The girl had been scolding him. "If it was so bad, why didn't you just ignore it? You didn't have to say what you did!"  
  
Eiri balked at this. She had a point. Stung and vulnerable, he coiled up like a cobra and struck. "And what about you? You must have pulled some strings to follow me all the way here... whoever you are."  
  
"I have a name!" she insisted, her thin voice cracking conspicuously, "Yuki Eiri-sama." Her face contorted around the honorific.  
  
Despite himself, Eiri chuckled. "No, that's MY name. You need one of your own."  
  
She blushed at the sight of his momentary smile. "Shindou," she mumbled. "Shindou... Ichigo."  
  
"Well, Miss Strawberry," Eiri taunted, "do you have some business with ME, to track me down this far? Or did you just fall in love with me at first sight?"  
  
The retort building on Ichigo's face suddenly fell flat. Her head dropped and she seemed to tremble.  
  
"Oh? You won't deny it?" Now Eiri's grin had settled in to stay. He liked this woman who looked like the fruit bearing her name. She was an easy target, and a way to release all his pent-up annoyance -- about the journey, about Seguchi, and now, about his growing attraction to her that just wouldn't fade.  
  
"Who would fall in love with YOU?" Ichigo finally snapped. "I just want you to come to the performance tomorrow. You can see if my poems are really so weak!!" Cheeks flushed with color, she shook a fist at him, straightening up so that her kimono shifted to expose a slender neckline. Eiri's desire skyrocketed. She was a firecracker, this girl, and he felt ignited and dazzled all at once.  
  
"You're annoying," he said, in an ominous voice, and she stared at him indignantly. Swifter than she could follow, he got up and began to stride toward her. She stood and tried to flee, but he was too quick, slamming the screen behind her and pinning her against it. The wooden frame bit into his hands and the pain felt good -- intense, like everything he was feeling right now. The intensity he thought he'd lost --  
  
"You follow me all the way up here, interrupt my privacy, treat me too familiarly, and make demands of me. You're the one who has a thing for me, and you accuse me of the same!?" He lowered his head close to hers, and she lost the ability to breathe or swallow, just staring, big unblinking blue eyes plunging into his own.  
  
Eiri's voice became scant more than a low rumble. "What do you want from me?" he demanded, all the while feeling the distance between their faces fade. He'd wanted to be in charge of this seduction, but something greater had taken over. Something he didn't have a name for, but seemed equal in power to the very force that kept mankind tied to the ground. He was falling toward Shindou Ichigo as though she was the earth.  
  
"Tell me," he managed to say, and then his lips were on hers.  
  
  
~~~~~~  
  
Author's Notes  
  
1) You may think that what I've done to Shuichi is unforgiveable. Give it one more chapter.  
  
2) This chapter was mostly filler. The true storyline, the major themes, etc., begin next time. Expect the story to be slow-moving in terms of action, but full of introspection. This is a story about what goes on in Eiri's head.  
  
I hope you enjoyed... this is a different sort of story than I'm used to writing, so if it's clumsy, I apologize. I know what I'm trying to get at... I hope I get at it and not something else...! 


	3. The Rage Beat

Loyalty  
by Jennifer A. Wand  
a Gravitation fan fiction  
  
  
  
III. The Rage Beat  
  
"Yamamoto Jin'emon always said to his retainers, 'Go ahead and gamble and lie. A person who will not tell you seven lies within a hundred yards is useless as a man.'"  
  
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai  
  
  
  
  
Ichigo tasted like her name. She didn't taste of strawberries - no one truly does - but something analogous: almost painfully sweet, a little hesitant, a little comforting. Eiri let out a muffled sigh as he kissed her. This girl stirred things in him long-dormant, and he'd forgotten how to keep certain reactions under control. Granted, part of him was relieved he _could_ feel this way for this girl, but the greater part was apprehensive and blaring warnings even as it lost control.  
  
The girl moaned, and struck with sudden heat, Eiri clasped his arms around her shoulders to pull her in. She struggled briefly at the contact, and Eiri loosened his grip, holding her delicately instead of pressing her to his chest. Drunk, he tasted her lips and tongue, dipped to her cheeks in their rosy redness, and leaned in to the neckline that had first seduced him. Her skin was clean and soapy, blushing marble.  
  
"Yuki..." Ichigo said weakly, and Eiri heard it as an erotic mirror of a long-ago sensation... something he'd once said, too. He felt he was making love to the past through the veil of the present. Groaning a little, he slipped her kimono down over one shoulder so he could kiss along her skin. The kimono sleeve dropped abruptly, and Eiri could feel the embarrassed blush heat up Ichigo's face as she resisted. "Wait... stop -- Yuki."  
  
Never before had the cliche of a maiden's protestations seemed more titillating to Eiri. With a wide sweep of his hand, he caught her ankles and lifted her in his arms, all the while taking long nips of her ears and jawline and murmuring "What, stop now?" Ichigo's only answer was a gasp. When he kissed some secret sensitive spot on her neck, she seized up and grabbed the back of his neck with two anxious hands. Eiri hit boiling point, and before she could protest, he threw her down on the readied futon and pulled away the folds of her kimono.  
  
Ichigo's protest reached his ears before anything else. "No! Yuki, don't!!" The terror in her voice was real -- no more was she being coy. Eiri froze, paralyzed by her tone, and it was only after her cries stopped ringing in his ears that he saw the reason for them.  
  
The minute he'd let go, Ichigo had scrambled to a kneeling position and was now busy rearranging the disheveled kimono over an exposed, and clearly male, chest.  
  
Eiri stared in silence until the boy -- for he was one, just barely out of his teens and still fair-featured enough to pull off a convincing ruse -- readjusted the kimono completely. When he'd finished, he turned a reproachful eye on Eiri. "I _told_ you to stop!" he blurted, in his natural tone of voice, a good octave lower than the falsetto.  
  
"Y.... you..." Eiri pointed a shaky finger.  
  
"The truth's out," the youth said sharply. "My name's not Ichigo, it's Shuichi. Shindou Shuichi. And I'm not a woman. I work with the kabuki troupe that entertains at Seguchi-sama's court."  
  
Eiri spoke only one word. Could it be that this boy was one of those kabuki actors who trained so intensively to play female roles that they spent much of their offstage life dressing and living as women, an... "Onnagata...?"  
  
"Part-time," Shuichi answered, sitting informally on the futon in a way that hardly befitted the wearer of so splendid a kimono. "I write. But you know that much."  
  
The situation finally sunk into Eiri's consciousness, and he was free to react to it. Rage built up inside him, and his mind raced, trying to figure out how he'd gotten into this predicament. A thought occurred to him that made his stomach lurch. "Did Seguchi put you up to this!?" he demanded.  
  
"Seguchi-sama?" The boy blinked innocently. "How could he..."  
  
Eiri sprang to his feet and began to pace. "This has to be his doing!" This was just like him. Tohma was constantly thinking of new ways to remind Eiri he'd never outrun his past, and this had to be the most infuriating to date. "To send you up here to tempt me..."  
  
This time it was Shuichi who bolted upwards to stand. "To tempt you!?" he shouted, his voice a more solid version of the outraged falsetto that had been facing off against Eiri just a few minutes ago. "You're the one who ATTACKED me!!"  
  
Logic is a funny thing. Usually it makes perfect sense, but when combined with anger, one can never predict its influence. Shuichi's statement was true. Perhaps, deep down, Eiri knew it, but now it only served to fuel the fire. "Get OUT!" he bellowed, fixing Shuichi in a heated glare. "GO!" He swayed ominously, as though his next move would be to attack Shuichi and beat him half to death. Shuichi paled, took a step back, and finally did as he was told, backing through the door hastily and closing it before dashing off down the hallway.  
  
  
Eiri took a stomping step toward the door and glared at it menacingly, as though Shuichi were hiding behind it and needed to be further scared off. Finally sure he was alone, Eiri began to pace. Anger quickened his breathing and trembles wracked his body. The rage beat in his heart, pounded in his wrists, his ears. How could he? Seguchi, Shuichi, himself... how could he justify any of their actions?   
  
"Damn!" he said aloud to the empty room, then repeated it in a lower tone. "Damn..." Despite the fact that no one had seen the interchange, Eiri felt as though he had been made a fool of. Well, if Seguchi had planned it, he was certainly laughing now. And who knows whom he, or Shuichi himself, would tell? Eiri had a sudden sickening vision of Shuichi, surrounded by a motley circle of actors, intoning, "You know that retainer that Seguchi-sama adores so? Well, he KISSED me last night!" Raucous laughter that never happened echoed in Eiri's ears, and his head began to hurt.  
  
It was not long before fatigue took its toll on Eiri's anger. His pacing slowed, and he began to feel a throbbing in his head. Nothing seemed better to him then than sleep -- lying down to lose consciousness and forget, for a few hours, this whole confusing world. To black out his shame, his guilt... for that was the feeling that overwhelmed him as he finally collapsed onto the futon, exhausted from his travels as well as from the confusing events of the night.  
  
It was only just before sleep that the thoughts crept, unbidden, into his head. Shuichi had spoken true. Eiri had been the one to approach him, to kiss him. His eyes had been defiant, his protests unmistakeable. He hadn't wanted this to happen. Perhaps Seguchi hadn't told him why he was sending him up there? But more important, Eiri knew, for a few strangely lucid moments, that HE had wanted it. So much it surprised him. And it had nothing to do with the gender of his companion. On the contrary, he had especially liked "Ichigo"'s awkward, unfeminine movements. It was the boy underneath the girl that Eiri had wanted - and continued to want now.  
  
Regret came with morning. Eiri berated himself through the day for allowing himself to feel quite so much. His life had nothing to do with desires, and the more he indulged himself with thoughts of them, the weaker he felt. No, there was a deeper problem at hand. If Seguchi had planned this - and Eiri was convinced he had - the lord had a definite motive in mind. Eiri's honor was very likely on the line.  
  
Halfway through the day, an attendant came to Eiri and bowed. "Seguchi-sama requests that you join him tonight at the Kabuki performance." All lingering doubts vanished, and Eiri's rage returned in force. This was no coincidence -- Seguchi was undoubtedly setting him up! Seguchi and Shuichi both in a room with him seemed like a recipe for disaster. Shuichi on stage, reading those horrendous poems and looking straight at him with those wide blue eyes, and Seguchi sitting beside him commenting slyly, "My, my, Eiri-san. Isn't that onnagata magnificent? Mightn't you mistake him for a _real_ woman?"  
  
He couldn't refuse to attend. Even if this really was an invitation and not a demand - which Eiri knew it to be - there would be another invitation, and another, until Seguchi had finally set up the situation he desired. Besides, no matter how trivial, a request from a lord was not a thing to be refused.  
  
What was Seguchi up to? Eiri couldn't divine his motives no matter how much he thought. Did he want to expose Eiri as unworthy? To have a tighter hold on him and ensure his cooperation should Seguchi have a mission for him Eiri would balk at? Surely Seguchi had engineered this incident as some sort of insurance. To make sure, once more, that he had Eiri wrapped around that cunning little finger.  
  
And what was worse, he couldn't get out of it. A samurai whose honor was tainted had but one recourse, and that was suicide. But Seguchi had made him promise... on a dark day when the rolling winds had seemed to bring down the sky...  
  
("I should be dead. I'm the one who should die."  
"Eiri-san, I want you to swear to me you won't die without my knowledge. I won't let you go. You're too important to me."  
"S... Seguchi-s..."  
"Swear to me, Eiri-san! I order it!"  
"I... swear..."  
And arms coming around him, black snakelike arms, as a voice whispered hot and hard into his ear. "I won't let you go, Eiri-san. I can't. I need you....")  
  
"Yuki-sama!"  
  
Eiri started, making a little gutteral sound. The messenger was still standing before him, looking up like a frightened doe at Eiri's dark expression. "Sh... shall I tell him you won't be joining him?" he asked, his voice melting like caramel.  
  
"No... I will attend," Eiri forced out, feeling decidedly sick as he said so. The attendant nodded briefly and scampered away as fast as his spindly doe-legs would take him. If only Eiri had the choice to run away as well!  
  
He couldn't kill himself. He couldn't betray Seguchi even in the lightest matter. That left one final option, one that dawned on him like a new day and collapsed over him just as naturally. He could kill the boy.  
  
As soon as he thought it, he felt a cold hand grasp his insides, and he lurched forward, clutching his stomach. No--! Something primal in him shuddered against that. All of a sudden he could not think of a world without Shuichi -- strange, strange, strange. His world had been without Shuichi until yesterday, and now it was fundamentally changed... just like that? Just with a glare, a kiss, a betrayal? For the first time, he regretted neglecting the monastic training his family had embraced for generations. A Zen-trained samurai would surely have no difficulty killing a man who could soil his honor.  
  
Was he growing soft as a samurai? Eiri wondered suddenly. Surely in his younger days, he would have had no qualms about taking control of such a situation. But in his younger days, he was miserable, bitter and broken from what he'd been through, from losing Yuki...  
  
Still, God, the idea that he'd end up like Seguchi -- deplorable, disgusting!  
  
Eiri liked the life of a warrior. It was perfect for him. Morals, routines, everything was decided for him. He needed only to look to traditions and tactics for what to do, what to feel. In those prescribed emotions, there was no weakness, no flaw. No vulnerability to lead him into hurt. Moral dilemmas were a weakness in combat, so the warrior's lifestyle prohibited them. It dictated every move and every decision. Nothing was unanticipated. Except, perhaps, for weakness on the part of the warrior.  
  
Eiri couldn't kill the boy. He couldn't reprimand his lord for the prank. What could he do but suffer?  
  
Through his reverie, his voice sounded, softer than silk but with an edge sharp and piercing as any blade. He opened his eyes and realized it was sunset.  
  
"Shall we, Eiri-san?" Tohma put a hand on his shoulder. "It's time for the play." 


	4. In The Moonlight

Loyalty  
by Jennifer A. Wand  
A Gravitation fan fiction  
  
IV. In The Moonlight  
  
"Narutami Hyogo said, 'What is called winning is defeating one's allies. Defeating one's allies is defeating oneself, and defeating oneself is vigorously overcoming one's own body.'"  
  
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai  
  
  
Nakano Hiroshi was used to playing the straight man. He had known Shuichi since childhood - they'd been neighbors, then friends - and he knew the routine: Shuichi got excited about something, flew all over the place, while Hiroshi tried his best to keep Shuichi anchored somewhere in reality. It was Hiro that had become interested in the theatre first, and he was the one who suggested that Shuichi join when the time came. But Shuichi took to the stage like a fish to water, his presence radiating like light in each role he took, and Hiro found himself playing the supporting roles again to Shuichi's extravagant diva.  
  
Not that Hiro minded. Shuichi was flighty, half-crazy, but he was undoubtedly fun, and Hiro was the most charmed of any audience that had ever come under Shuichi's spell. There was something pleasantly vicarious about letting someone else live a life of constant excitement right before your eyes, while indulging yourself in the comforts of the familiar. And Hiro considered himself, in a small way, indispensible. Without his grounding, Shuichi would surely fly too high and destroy himself through sheer fancy. Hiro was Shuichi's anchor, and he prided himself on that.  
  
So even Hiro was surprised at what he'd said that afternoon. Encouraging Shuichi's flights of fancy was not his style, but this time there seemed something true about it that Hiro couldn't openly deny. It had all started when Shuichi and Hiro were practicing a scene, half-costumed, in the open air just outside the castle walls.  
  
Hiro had been affixing Shuichi's wig as Shuichi scribbled scraps of poetry on bits of parchment he'd found here and there. A wind had set one of the scraps aloft, and, panicked, Shuichi started running after it. In the tight folds of the kimono he couldn't move freely, and the paper stayed just out of reach as Shuichi dashed off after it. Before Hiro knew it, both Shuichi and his elusive prey were out of sight.  
  
It was several minutes before Shuichi returned, and when he did, it was obvious something had changed about him. His cheeks were flushed, not wholly from the exertion, and there were little twitches of determination darting about his features. Even the hair of his wig was dishevelled and windswept, and the effect was quite convincing -- it looked more like his real hair than ever. Shuichi was the picture of a maiden in love, Hiro thought suddenly with an internal giggle.  
  
"Can you believe the nerve of some people!?" he burst out when he got his breath back.  
  
This coming from you? Hiro wanted to say, but he didn't. "What's wrong?"  
  
Shuichi flushed a deeper red. "My poem was seen... by this incredibly... obnoxious man." He looked as though he was fumbling for the perfect word to describe this stranger, and Hiro wondered what other adjectives had crossed his mind. "He was so cruel to me, telling me it was worse than a six-year-old's and stuff..."  
  
Hiro rolled his eyes. "So? Forget about it. You'll never see him again anyway."  
  
"I can't!" Shuichi retorted. "I can't just forget about it. Why'd he have to be so mean?"  
  
"Did you have some reason you expected him to be nice?" Hiro shrugged, and smiled warmly at his friend. "There are nasty people out there, Shuichi. They're not worth thinking about. You just do what yo do and let it go."  
  
But Shuichi wouldn't let it go. The rehearsal went badly, and Shuichi had a sour expression on his face that made him look comical in his finely tailored costume. A kimono, a wig, and a pout. Whenever Hiro attempted to address the problem, Shuichi would shut down, crawling into a little mental box and glaring at Hiro for daring to intrude. He wouldn't hear a word of Hiro's attempts to either console him or discredit his offender. Later, as they returned to the court, amidst Shuichi's continued complaints and little self-pitying moans, it finally struck Hiro just what Shuichi's problem was.  
  
"You like him," he suddenly said with a grin.  
  
Shuichi stumbled backwards a few steps. "Wh-- what was that!?"  
  
"You like him. You're attracted to him." Hiro poked Shuichi in the chest accusingly. "He's all you can talk about, but you won't hear a bad word about him. You fell for him. Didn't you?"  
  
Shuichi turned purple. "I.. I beg your pardon!?" he said, stamping a foot at Hiro. "He's a man, you know!"  
  
"You like who you like," Hiro shrugged. "No helping it."  
  
"But I just met him!" Shuichi snapped. "I don't even know who he is!"   
  
"You said he was carrying a helmet and walking with a horse," Hiro mused. "It's safe to assume he was a samurai, right? And he wasn't far from the castle. I bet if you look, you can find him."  
  
"B... but why would I?!" demanded an increasingly violet-faced Shuichi.  
  
Hiro smirked. "To confess your love, of course."  
  
Whether Shuichi had, in fact, confessed his love or not Hiro didn't know. But he knew something had happened with the samurai they both now knew to be Yuki Eiri, the famous and favored Uesugi-clan samurai whom Seguchi Tohma treated like a beloved child. There was something shining about Shuichi as he readied for this night's performance, and there was also something sad. Hiro felt a pang as he watched his friend do his makeup, patting on the white powder that would give him the appearance of a woman's complexion. That bird that Hiro had tethered all this time to keep from flying aimlessly -- might have finally found a place to fly to. And where would Hiro be, once Shuichi had soared off into the sky?  
  
  
  
Seguchi Tohma was a fool. Eiri chewed on the thought comfortably as he took his seat, knowing it, at least, was the unqualified truth. What noble, much less a daimyo who was once a triumphing warrior himself, still openly enjoyed the kabuki theatre? The fashion had turned away from kabuki, and the choice of the well-educated samurai of the day was the ever-so-much-more-graceful Noh play. The former was loud, brash, and undisguised; the latter subtle and restrained. Tohma was inviting scorn and ruining his own reputation, and he showed no recognition of that fact, nor remorse for it. Eiri found some perverted satisfaction in this knowledge.  
  
His mind had been churning all day. Dilemma after dilemma, all burning brightly over the coals of desire that lay smoldering at the base of his heart. Eiri took comfort in the inanity of the play to come, knowing that it would surely be completely lacking in subtlety. There would be no major moral dilemma here. Everything would be clear-cut and headed for a predictable conclusion. Eiri had never been a huge fan of the theatre, but perhaps tonight he could simply enjoy the play for what it was - a chance to forget his own internal battles in the orchestrated pandemonium onstage. He sat back in his seat, willing his body to relax, willing the uncertainties in his mind to recede.  
  
The story was a simple one. Adapted from a Noh play, it was, like so many others, the story of a love gone wrong -- a woman betrayed by a lover who becomes a vengeful spirit and is only returned to herself when she has exacted her revenge. Her remorse and sadness at his death overwhelm her so completely that she becomes an ever-crying weeping willow tree. The subtlety of Noh drama that would have tempered the emotional extremes of the story were lost here: it was melodramatic madness onstage, and Seguchi seemed moved to tears from the very beginning. Whether those tears were sincere or not was anybody's guess.  
  
The woman who was the main character in the play did not come onstage until about halfway through. First, the leading man, a handsome young actor with muted features, had a long sequence in which he returned to the place he'd dallied as a boy, speaking at length about his follies, including his youthful affairs. An old woman, wrapped in a cloak, approached him and warned him of evil signs that seemed to be dogging his every step. The man laughed off her warnings, but as he walked by the old woman pulled down her cloak and revealed that she was actually the spirit of his jilted lover.   
  
At the first sight of her face, Eiri sat forward in his seat. A thousand hammers started a lively chorus in his heart. It was Shuichi.  
  
He glowed on the dimly lit stage, speaking of love and life gone, the whisper of his movements like poetry even in their choreographed regularity. His voice moved through the spectrum of pitch and intensity, sometimes the high, wailing quiver of a bowstring, sometimes the low rumble of a drum. When he danced, his body was music. Energy and passion collided like waves in a seastorm in the rhythms of his expressions, his actions. Eiri found himself watching one of his exposed arms as it flowed beneath the torches like water in the moonlight, smooth white marble falling in and out of shadow like a secret that has not yet been told. Light, dark, solid, liquid. This boy danced among the elements like he was one of them.  
  
Eiri's blood pounded hot in his ears. This child was perfect, a perfect creation. His fingers ached, imagining the touch of that white skin. At the memory of that stolen, all-too-short kiss, his lips pursed reflexively. One hand clasped the other convulsively, trying to keep control of the desires that flooded him. He couldn't let himself be tempted...  
  
And then it all came rushing back to him, his suspicions, his fears, his dilemmas. He turned to Seguchi, afraid he had seen even the slightest sign of his sudden weakness. Half of him expected Seguchi to be staring at him with a sly smile on his face, but his fears were not answered. Tohma was watching the play with intent eyes, his head angled forward, his whole body absorbed in the action on stage. If he knew about Eiri's distress, he certainly didn't care.  
  
Eiri's mind reeled. So Seguchi hadn't planned his little encounter with Shuichi after all. He wanted to laugh -- was he that anxious to deny himself that he created a conspiracy where there was none? Ashamed, Eiri looked at his hands. He was a miserable man, really. The only glimmer of real life and real feeling he'd known in so many years had come falling into his hands, and what did Eiri do? He tried to make it into a trap, into a battle. Eiri himself was attacking the last shreds of humanity he had left.  
  
So it was possible to be uncomfortable in one's own skin, Eiri mused. So he couldn't even trust himself to tell him the truth. He felt itchy and anxious. He could be tricked, duped, deceived by anyone else on earth without concern - he'd stopped trusting them years ago when he'd learned the taste of betrayal. But to lose even faith in himself... it was like being lost in limbo. Eiri didn't know which way was up. He fumbled for a handhold in the darkness.  
  
Then his eyes caught sight of Shuichi again, still radiant on stage, and it was like dawning light. Something deeper than just his mind was drawing him to this boy, something too desperate and almost primal to lie. It was his mind that had complicated things, that threatened to throw into disarray this simple, strong, true attraction. Eiri suddenly found himself clinging to the feelings that had scared him not so long ago. This urge to be close to him - that was truth of the deepest kind. He couldn't let the enemy overpower him, even if the enemy was himself.  
  
::I've never lost a battle to another man.::  
  
::I'll be damned if I lose to myself.::  
  
With those words, Eiri decided.  
  
  
  
  
He waited for Shuichi outside the theatre, although he had the feeling the actor would seek him out even if he'd returned to his room. But he wanted to be outside with him, to feel the breezes and see the stars that were all false and fabricated inside the palace. This was to be a major battle, and he needed room to roam.  
  
Shuichi, still wiping off his makeup with a small rag, finally emerged. His body was glistening with a fine layer of sweat, proof of the exertion his trade required. Eiri wanted immediately to taste that shining skin, but he held back and waited for Shuichi to see him standing there.  
  
When he did, his whole face came alive with a mixture of pleasure and shock. "Y...Yuki!" he burst out. "What are you doing here? I mean, I know what you're doing here, I saw you in the audience, but what are you doing out _here_?"  
  
Eiri gave him a sly smile. "Waiting for you," he said simply.  
  
Shuichi turned about three colors at once. Like a wave of heat, a jumble of emotions hit Eiri head-on: confusion, happiness, apprehension. Shuichi didn't know whether to apologize, get angry, run away, or melt. He froze, trying to make up his mind. In the moment of confusion, Eiri grabbed his wrist and started to pull him along the path toward a remote courtyard just inside the gates.   
  
His heart pounding, Shuichi followed along in silence. Hiro's words echoed in his head, and with the huge warm hand enclosing his wrist, he couldn't deny their truth. This man had seduced him the minute he'd laid eyes on him. His cold eyes and sharp comments had hooked him, and the warmth of his kiss had drawn him in like a fish on a line. Now they were entering a small secluded courtyard, and he was slowing down and turning to face him, and Shuichi knew only that he was completely in love. Washes of warm emotion flew through him and left red splashes at the base of his neck as he flushed.  
  
"I was... happy to see you there tonight," he finally offered, daring for a moment to look into the intense rings of Eiri's eyes before averting his own.   
  
"It was just a whim. Don't take it the wrong way," Eiri said before regretting it. That wasn't what he was here to do, he reminded himself. He did his best to fight the impulse to drive Shuichi away. That was his fear, his enemy, talking.  
  
"Well, I..." Shuichi started and then stopped short, fumbling for the words. His foot traced an errant path in the dust as he stood, back and forth like a pendulum. Eiri actually found himself nervous, frightened to elicit the wrong response from this young man if he were to approach him. He'd done so much wrong already, if he were rejected now, he feared it might kill him. He studied Shuichi's face, hoping for a clue.  
  
For a brief moment, the boy's profile angled up toward the stars, and he looked like an apparition. Bathed in the moonlight, eyes speaking of something faraway and dreamy. Eiri felt his fear grow into panic. Was this child a ghost sent to haunt him? A ghost of himself, of his own past? His nerves prickled and he felt his body aching to run away.  
  
::But I won't lose to myself.::  
  
Fighting his urge to flee, Eiri instead reached forward and drew the young man into his arms. The pale apparition turned startlingly real as Shuichi's cheeks flushed madly. The beginning of a question formed on his lips and faded into the air. "Yu..."  
  
"Enough," muttered Eiri as he drank in Shuichi's scent - makeup, perspiration, and innocence. Shuichi fell silent, his arms hesitantly coming upward to clutch at Eiri's chest, hot little fists clinging to him. Eiri let his face fall into Shuichi's hair, kissing the top of his head, moving down to the tussles of bangs that fell over his forehead. The muscles beneath his hands tightened. He thought he heard Shuichi utter a little desperate prayer.  
  
Eiri's lips claimed his with fervor, with a sense of victory. After a moment of hesitation, Shuichi leaned into the embrace, wrapping his arms around Eiri and falling against him. Completely trusting, completely vulnerable, completely his. Eiri knew at that moment that he had won. Won the heart of this beautiful boy, won the battle he'd been fighting with himself. Won his life and his feelings back.   
  
And having won, he proceeded to lose himself completely.  
  
to be continued...  
  
~  
  
Author's notes:  
  
I recently read a bit of a novel that suggested that there actually was no mouth-to-mouth kissing between lovers until around the Tokugawa era, when foreigners introduced it (and were immediately banished). Heck, I may have read that kabuki didn't exist until then, either. Guess what? This is my universe and I dun care. ^_^ Besides, I have a feeling it's not entirely true (for reasons I shan't go into). The kissing that is, not the kabuki.... 


	5. Super Drive

Loyalty  
by Jennifer A. Wand  
a Gravitation fan fiction  
  
Warning: this chapter contains explicit sex. I don't know if that should be a warning or an advertisement. ^_^;  
  
V. Super Drive  
  
  
"Last year at a great conference there was a certain man who explained his dissenting opinion and said that he was resolved to kill the conference leader if it was not accepted. His motion was passed. After the procedures were over the man said, 'Their assent came quickly. I think that they are too weak and unreliable to be counselors to the master.'"  
  
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai  
  
  
  
  
  
Eiri had never known pleasure like this before.  
  
He had known pleasure, of course. He remembered surrendering, helplessly, deliriously, to an embrace, to earnest words spoken to him that made him want to die from joy. Rough hands pressed against his, his body opening up to accept a lover's penetration, the heat and pain that somehow translated into beauty. But those moments had been strangely one-sided -- not because he wasn't receiving any pleasure, far from it! But he had no control over when and how he did.  
  
Now he was the one in control, and Shuichi was in his position -- young, innocent, eyes misty with pain but glowing with affection, submitting himself completely and totally to the experience. They lay naked on the futon in Eiri's room, Eiri's body covering his, Shuichi's head tilted to the side so Eiri could examine that delicately perfect profile. Their eyes were open - Shuichi's kept widening in surprise as Eiri made love to him, and Eiri's watched every twitch and tremble of Shuichi's features as though afraid to miss a single reaction.  
  
He wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much if it was simply taking control. That, too, was one-sided and one-dimensional, as fun as it would have been to reverse the power play in a sort of revenge against his past. But that wasn't all Eiri was feeling tonight. As Shuichi winced and moaned slightly beneath him, Eiri felt a tremendous rush of emotion. He wanted to give this boy all the pleasure he was taking from him, wanted desperately to do anything and everything that would keep this moment from ending. The beauty of Shuichi's hazy eyes made Eiri dizzy. The taste of his skin intoxicated him. Eiri was in control, but he was also deliriously out of control. That duality was like nothing he'd ever felt before. When he reached climax, he couldn't help throwing his arms around Shuichi's waist and murmuring his name into the soft skin of his back. "Shu...ichi..... oh."  
  
Afterwards, they lay together on the futon, Eiri leaning back comfortably with Shuichi cuddled up to him like a baby animal to its mother. His hands wandered lazily over Eiri's skin, feeling every crevice, his lips darting along Eiri's collarbone. Eiri felt each touch as a hazy tingle amidst the clouds of bliss that had settled over him like smoke. His first instinct was to sleep, his second to start all over again. Muted excitement ran through his veins and he wished he had the energy and staying power to make love to the boy again right at that moment. His body had reached its limit, but his mind wasn't satisfied. He couldn't get enough of him.  
  
"Yuki," Shuichi murmured with a goofy smile.   
  
Eiri said nothing.  
  
"Yukiyukiyukiyukiyuki," Shuichi said.  
  
"What?" Eiri finally burst out.  
  
"Just saying your name," Shuichi answered. "Yu-yu-yuyuyuyuyuki."  
  
"Cut that out," Eiri scowled, trying to shift Shuichi's weight off of him and turn onto his side. It was unsuccessful - Shuichi sprang at him the instant he started to move and wrapped his arms around his neck. His chin dug into Eiri's chest and he smiled winningly. Eiri frowned in complete puzzlement.  
  
"Yuki!"  
  
Eiri snapped at him, "Don't say my name without a reason!"  
  
"Tell me about yourself..!"  
  
This was completely unexpected. "Eh...?"  
  
Shuichi extracted a hand from the back of Yuki's neck and started counting on his fingers. "Like.... where were you born, what's your family like, how'd you meet Seguchi-sama..." His voice put a loud accent on the last sound of every phrase that made it seem like he was dropping heavy sacks of words in a row. Eiri began to feel uncomfortable. Anything that connected his name with the past tense tended to do that to him.  
  
But before he could say anything, Shuichi had more to say. "My family's farmers. You know, like most of the people around here. We have a rice field on the north side of town, about a half day's walk. I have a sister, Maiko. She's crazy." Eiri thought about making a comment, but restrained himself. "The battles have been coming closer and closer to home and I've seen a lot of my friends become foot soldiers. I thought any minute now, someone would come along and drag me off to war too."  
  
Eiri felt a frightening jolt move along his spine. Something about the way this narrative was going rubbed him the wrong way. He couldn't put his finger on it until Shuichi continued, "So my first thought was to dress up like a woman. I could pull it off! You know that, don't you? But Hiro talked me out of it. Oh, Hiro is my best friend. He's in the kabuki troupe with me and..."  
  
One of Eiri's hands came up from his sides and extended a finger to cover Shuichi's lips. "You wouldn't fight?" he said. After that length of silence, his voice sounded strangely hoarse.  
  
"Well, naturally." Shuichi didn't notice the strangeness in Eiri's tone. "I'm not cut out to be a soldier like you are. Who wants to go out and die just because some person you've never met your whole life says so?" Shuichi went on, but Eiri stopped listening there. The words struck him as the strangest paradox -- completely true and utterly wrong all at once. This child did the unthinkable. He thought of himself, not of those to whom he owed loyalty, not of those who protected him and made his life safe to live. Eiri had a notion to scold his parents for reckless child-rearing.   
  
And yet the truth of what he spoke was unmistakeable. It was the truth that warriors like himself were conditioned, practically from birth, to conceal. If they were afraid of death, they were taught to welcome it. If they had personal desires, they were taught to despise them. Samurai life turned one completely against one's selfish nature and raised one to a higher plane. Eiri had often looked down from that plane onto the smaller lives he protected. But never had he gotten this close. The views that were quaint from a distance were somehow repugnant up close. Repugnant and strangely thrilling, like this boy in his bed was a native of some savage land, where the life of a man was no one's but his own. Eiri felt a rush of desire to civilize this savage, and another to join him.  
  
And in loving him, he found the answer to both.   
  
Eiri reached his arms around Shuichi and pulled him in again. Possessed by the superb energy, the super drive for living that this boy held, Eiri found himself renewed. Perhaps this was wrong, this strange, untested desire that could lead him into ruin. But when Shuichi's cries rang out again in the small room, his reservations melted into a rush of passion that crashed violently onto the long-abandoned shores of love.  
  
-  
  
When Hiro next saw Shuichi, he knew at once what had happened to him. Perhaps it was the healthy glow that seemed to pervade his skin; perhaps it was the new musicality of his voice when he greeted him. But most likely what clued Hiro in was the fact that Shuichi was grinning like a fool and absolutely refused to tell him what was going on. "Hey, Hiro... ask me if something good happened to me last night," he'd said. When Hiro humored him, Shuichi's only answer was "I'm not telling!"  
  
"Something good happened with Yuki Eiri, right?"  
  
"How'd you know?" Shuichi's hitherto unshakeable grin drooped into a pout.  
  
"How could I not!?"  
  
And soon it was the whole court that knew. Despite Eiri's efforts to keep silent and unobtrusive, Shuichi's behavior was so transparent that even the blindest of the old court matrons could see the truth. It was ladies' gossip at first -- it's women who enjoy most the affairs of handsome men, be they with women or with each other -- and was seen as a source of amusement. Attendance at the kabuki performances tripled, though the audience seemed more distracted than usual: the buzz that spread quickly throughout the room was seldom related to kakegoe or any other traditional method of audience participation. But none of these women had the right to start a conversation with a man, much less a stranger, and so Eiri and Shuichi went right on not knowing that everyone knew.  
  
Not that they could be bothered to care. Shuichi watched Eiri intently as he practiced the sword, bounding up after a workout to ask him questions. The two took long walks and picnic lunches under the shade of gracefully arching trees. They argued hotly almost every day, and both their favorite insults for the other - "high-and-mighty!" "damned kid!" - were well-known in the court. When their eyes met in a room, visible electricity seemed to jolt between them. And Eiri met Shuichi after every kabuki performance, though the rumor was that every night Eiri told him, "I won't be waiting for you next time, you damned kid."  
  
Shuichi was the epitome of a starry-eyed kid in love. His temper flared easily but dissolved just as quickly, and Eiri's taking his hand or patting him on the head was enough to erase an entire day of harsh words from his mind. With Hiro, it was "Yuki is amazing," "Yuki is so handsome," "I want to make Yuki happy," "What do you suppose Yuki sees in me?" To his audiences, he was even more effervescent, if a tad less serious, than he'd ever been before. And to Eiri himself, Shuichi was mercurial. One night he'd attack him with kisses, the next night be coy and hesitant, and on yet another night he'd look at him with serious eyes until Eiri cut off his stare altogether.  
  
For Eiri, Shuichi was like a fountain of youth. Everything was new to this nimble, unpredictable boy, and that made it all feel new again to Eiri, too. He constantly found that he felt impossibly romantic, so much so he hardly knew how to express it. What was this power that kept drawing him back to the actors' door each night to meet him? Again, it was like falling... a direction so natural one hardly thinks to question why it is one goes that way.   
  
And yet Shuichi was so disturbing, too. In a way Eiri couldn't quite articulate. Sometmies, little nagging questions took root in his head and made it hard for him to sleep. Why had Shuichi pretended so hard to be a girl when they had first met? To get close to him? It wasn't as if onnagata usually made a secret of their sex, even when they were partial to men themselves. And even if Shuichi had played the girl during their first meeting, why had he continued the charade? Eiri didn't like being lied to. And though he didn't admit it, more than a little of his frustration was probably due to the fact that he had been completely and utterly fooled.  
  
-  
  
Looking back, Eiri realized Tohma could have known about it from the very start. It certainly seemed like he didn't, but who could tell how the mind of that cunning man worked? After all, Tohma had called him in for an audience, and when he arrived, he'd been instructed to wait in the adjoining alcove while his lord held another conversation in the chamber... a conversation which Eiri could hear every word of.  
  
"...friend of mine, a man named Sakano. Sort of flighty, but a good sort, and a patron of the arts if there ever was one. You may have seen him here last week. He was the one with the matted hair and nervous expression."  
  
"Oh, I remember. I was afraid he'd jump from his seat any minute." Eiri cocked an ear... the voice was Shuichi's.  
  
Tohma laughed an obliging, false laugh, and Eiri could practically hear the smile that crept to his lips like a thieving cat across a ledge. "He told me he was quite pleased with your performance and that he thought your energy and presence was, frankly, wasted in kabuki. He'd like to bring you to Nara to train you as a Noh actor."  
  
"M..me? In Noh?" Shuichi stuttered. Eiri felt a brief quickening of his pulse.  
  
"According to Sakano-san, your presence is strong, but needs discipline. The subtlety of Noh is much preferred to the melodrama of kabuki these days, anyway. And as a Noh actor you're likely to get more exposure. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if you were asked to entertain the shogun, at that."  
  
"Th..the shogun!?" Eiri laughed to himself, imagining Shuichi flailing wildly, not sure what to do with his hands at such an outrageous suggestion.  
  
"So, I'll make arrangements for you to leave for Nara in the morning. It's just as well, really. There's a threat from the north and I'd hate to see you caught up in a battle for our land. Art may have a place in war, but artists certainly do not. That's what I think." Eiri almost laughed out loud at this. Did Tohma consider himself an artist now? Is that why he'd become so ridiculously soft?   
  
But his thoughts were halted when Shuichi spoke again. "No."  
  
"I... beg your pardon?" Tohma stuttered in disbelief.  
  
"I refuse to go," Shuichi said, louder.  
  
Eiri's cheeks flushed with anger. He wanted to go in there and pound on the child's head until he showed some respect. It wasn't a question of whether Tohma deserved that respect, of course; he was a lord. It was due him. One didn't say no to one's lord unless one wanted to be sentenced to disembowel oneself. Did Shuichi know what he was getting into here?  
  
Tohma seemed to have recovered. "And what on earth," he began, his words deliberate and measured, "causes you to refuse such an offer? Surely your ambition flies high enough to know its generosity."  
  
"I know," Shuichi said. "I'm sorry." Well, at least the damned kid knew to apologize, Eiri shrugged. "But I won't go."  
  
"But why not?"  
  
"I won't leave Yuki."  
  
This time, Eiri's face reddened with more than anger. This damned, straightforward, unabashed, shameless child! Eiri simultaneously wanted to box his ears and kiss him silly. Sometimes the brat seemed to have courage and honesty beyond anything Eiri could ever muster up. But at the same time, what good was courage if it invited selfishness? Being willing to stand up for yourself was a dangerous ability. One had to know when as well as how to employ it.  
  
"Yuki...? You don't mean...Eiri-san?" Tohma stuttered. "Why, has he been 'employing' you?" Eiri scowled at the implication. Many kabuki actors were also part-time male prostitutes, but Eiri had the feeling Shuichi wasn't the type. He had too much of the starry-eyed child in him.  
  
"He's not employing me," Shuichi went on defiantly. Eiri cringed, knowing what would surely come next from this foolish, loose-lipped child. "He and I are lovers."  
  
Eiri heard a rustle of garments, as though Tohma had moved forward quickly. He pictured him bolting to his feet in a rage. When he spoke, his voice was livid. "You? Eiri-san's lover!?" He boomed in the most frightening tone he could muster, "I should have you killed!" And then, Shuichi's passionate reply...  
  
never came.  
  
Eiri took in a sharp breath, waiting, but there was nothing. He clenched his fists. What was going on? What had happened to Shuichi? The boy still had to retort, still had to triumph over Tohma's meddling and declare he would not be moved. Caught up in the anticipation, Eiri didn't even notice he had switched sides and was now rooting for Shuichi's continued rebellion.  
  
Finally, Shuichi spoke.  
  
"Th... that would be a problem too," he said weakly.  
  
Tohma's voice slid back into its normal drawl. "Then you'll go to Nara?"  
  
"Give me one more day," sighed Shuichi. "I'll go the day after tomorrow."  
  
"Granted," Tohma replied, sounding just as tired. "My word... Eiri-san's lover..."  
  
But by this time Eiri was already through the door and advancing on the pair. Shuichi whirled, his eyes lighting up, and Tohma looked slightly offended. One didn't just barge in on a daimyo in a private audience. But Eiri wasn't here to disturb him, though it was Tohma he faced when he pointed a finger at Shuichi and announced, in a roar of rage:  
  
"This child is not my lover!"  
  
Both men blinked. Shuichi stuttered a moment, then lapsed into a familiar whine. "But Yuki...."  
  
Yuki silenced him with a glare.   
  
"Not anymore," he said.  
  
----to be continued-----  
  
Author's notes:  
1) Oh, stick with it. How many times did Eiri try to dump him in the original?  
  
2) Sorry this chapter took so long to get out. It's my policy not to post a chapter until the chapter after it was done, and Chapter 6 gave me merry hell. Chapter 7 should be fun to write, though, so hopefully 6 will be posted soon. 


	6. Blind Game Again

Loyalty  
by Jennifer A. Wand  
a Gravitation fan fiction  
  
VI. Blind Game Again  
  
"Nakano Jin'emon constantly said, 'A person who serves when treated kindly by the master is not a retainer. But one who serves when the master is being heartless and unreasonable is a retainer.'"  
  
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai  
  
  
  
"But why?"  
  
The question rang throughout the court. Ladies sipping tea and sake heard it and inclined their dainty ears toward the sound of gossip. Guards and warriors heard it and were repulsed by the begging tone. Local idlers and peasants heard it and wondered what all the fuss was about.   
  
Eiri heard it and kept walking.  
  
"Why, Yuki? Why?" Shuichi tripped and stumbled over his own frantically flying feet as he trailed after Eiri, whose back was to him as he walked away at full speed. He didn't look back; he didn't give any signs of hearing. He simply moved through the court, never giving notice to the ruckus on his heels. His brows were locked in a scowl, and he frowned at the floor as he hurried along.  
  
He sped up as he entered the corridor leading to his chambers, seeing the goal in sight. He spun as soon as he entered the room and pushed the sliding door closed as quickly as he could, hoping to lock Shuichi out. It didn't work. Shuichi inserted one foot in the doorway, howling in pain when the door slammed into him, but at the same time grabbing the wooden supports of door and doorframe with fast-moving hands and pushing as hard as he could to squeeze his whole body through. Eiri was strong enough to drive a sword through human flesh, but he wasn't quite brutal enough to spear Shuichi on wood and paper. He sighed and let go abruptly, causing Shuichi to spill into the room like an over-full kettle of boiling confusion.  
  
"Get out of here," he demanded, as Shuichi drew himself up from the ragged heap on the floor he had been. He knew the demand had less potency than water, but still he felt obliged to say it. As though the boy would obey him, when he'd defied Seguchi!   
  
"Why did you say that?" Shuichi repeated.  
  
Eiri found his voice rising despite himself. "You think I'm going to associate with someone who doesn't even have the decency to obey his own lord? You're disgusting!"  
  
Shuichi didn't buy it. "That's not the real reason!" he retorted. "Why, Yuki? Why?"  
  
"'Why, Yuki, why?'" Eiri mimicked. "You echo so much, you might as well be a canyon -- empty inside and only good at repeating others' words!"  
  
"That's not an answer!"  
  
"Well, it'll have to do!" The shouting match was so loud, it was giving Eiri a headache. Yet he couldn't get out of it. Weariness began to cloud his already rage-blurred vision. "You've got no sense of respect or loyalty at all! How could I think to get involved with someone who pulls crossdressing stunts to avoid standing up and fighting for the land he farms on?"  
  
"And I suppose you'd dress up like a woman AND root around in the mud with pigs if Seguchi-sama told you to!" Shuichi retorted.  
  
Eiri felt his knees go weak with fatigue. He waved a hand at Shuichi. "Just leave! I don't want to see your face!"  
  
"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Shuichi shouted. "Do what you want with my body without having to deal with who I am! Sometimes I think you're only interested in what goes on here--" he gestured broadly with one arm at the futon-- "and not in me!"  
  
Trembling with rage and frustration, Eiri spit, "What about you!? You're the one who doesn't care! Do I mean so little to you that you'd change your mind about leaving the minute Seguchi threatens you?"  
  
It was only when Shuichi leaned back and blinked a few times that Eiri realized what he'd said. He felt all the color drain from his face, leaving his already-white skin pallid and hollow. Shuichi had broken him - he'd lost. The lies, like clouds, had parted, and the truth came tumbling from his lips like stubborn sunlight. He wanted to sink to the futon and cry. He'd never be able to drive the boy away now.  
  
"Yuki..." The word was all wonder and disbelief on Shuichi's lips. He drew the next conclusion cautiously, as though afraid to leap too far. "Then... you wanted me to stay?"  
  
Eiri moaned in response. "I wanted you to say yes or no, one way or the other, and damn the consequences! Isn't there anything you'd give your life for?" he demanded, and then added weakly, "I thought that maybe... I was..."  
  
"I love you," Shuichi said suddenly.  
  
Eiri staggered. "What?"  
  
"I love you," the boy repeated, his gaze direct and unwavering. "I'm in love with you. You have to know that much by now. There's nothing I wouldn't give to be with you."  
  
Half of Eiri screamed to run forward, to seize this beautiful, honest young boy with all his might and admit that he felt the same. But the sick suspicion that had lain too long in the pit of his stomach bit at him like an angry dog. "Then why?" was all he said.  
  
A hint of a smile touched Shuichi's face. "Because if I die, I can't be with you," he said. "It's that simple. If I'm alive, we can still be together someday, even if I have to go away for now."  
  
Eiri knew he was crumpling inside. Soon, he would have no willpower left, and he'd have to give in and touch Shuichi. Still, he brandished words like a rusty sword that no one believed would cut. "If Tohma wants you away from me," he said, his voice catching and becoming a raw croak, "then you won't get to see me. He'll order you to stay away."  
  
"Orders won't stop me," Shuichi said, fire in his eyes. "I'll find a way to get to you, whether he likes it or not."  
  
"You'd dishonor yourself. And me. Would you do that to me?" Eiri accused.  
  
"Honor!" Shuichi threw his hands in the air. "Would you listen to yourself? You tell me I'm disloyal because I would rather live than die, even if it means being away from you. And now you'd throw me away for the sake of your precious pride? What the hell is honor, anyway? Is it something you can hold? Touch? Count like grains of rice? You can't, Yuki! Honor's something you make up inside your own head! It doesn't affect anyone else and it sure as hell doesn't keep you warm at night!"  
  
Eiri heard himself speak rather than willing the words to his lips. "It does," he said brokenly, "when it's all you have."  
  
Shuichi stared at him a moment. Then he moved forward, pushing himself into Eiri's arms, nuzzling his chest. He was so warm that Eiri couldn't help but gasp. "You have me now," Shuichi murmured, his voice vibrating into him. "Are you going to let go of that?"  
  
"...I have no choice," Eiri moaned, the sorrow in his voice unmistakeable.  
  
Shuichi's grip became fiercer. "You've held your pride so close for so long, Yuki," he whispered hotly, meaningfully into the older man's chest. "Hold me instead."  
  
Eiri's eyes widened, and his body tensed. He felt like he'd been speared on a sword of ringing truth. Shuichi went on. "Hold me as tightly as you do your pride," he said. "Embrace me like you embrace your duty. I'm just like them, Yuki. I'm as real as they are. I'll satisfy you like they do and I'll make your life as difficult as they do. But the difference, Yuki, is that when you hold me... I'll hold you too."  
  
The last pillar of self-control tumbled into a sea of emotion, and Eiri's arms came around Shuichi in an embrace like a vise, holding him in place. Feverish passion rose up in his veins, and he was only able to whisper again, "...I have no choice!" Meaningless words, drowned and betrayed by his actions, as his mouth, his hands, his body, sought Shuichi's, as he forgot the world.  
  
-  
  
Tohma smiled to himself as he made his way down the hall. Things couldn't have gone better if he had handed Eiri a script to follow. Now the boy was no longer a threat, here or in Nara. Nothing could break Eiri's iron will -- Tohma knew this much. He had tried many a time.  
  
Perhaps it had all been Yuki's fault. Kitazawa Yuki had put young Eiri in a horrific position, and when the chaos finally came to its climax, Eiri was in the middle, dripping with blood and destroyed inside. A young warrior capable of so much power, and yet so powerless against the intricate movements of the world that went on despite him. Perhaps Eiri had lost his capacity for true power that night, and Tohma had seen his chance: to have complete control of a perfect warrior who was incapable of personal ambition -- surely that was the dream of every leader. Security without the threat of mutiny. And from that desire to control, something else had emerged. Tohma had the self-awareness to think of it as an obsession, but that didn't lessen its grip on his mind.  
  
Many nights, especially when he was away in battle, Eiri appeared in Tohma's dreams. But not the real Eiri -- a strange puppet of himself, moving jerkily at every pull Tohma made at his strings. Granted, the dreams were luscious, and the memory of the dream-Eiri made living through the days so much more bearable. But the cravings the dreams satisfied were nothing compared to the longings they instilled in Tohma. He wanted to feel that skin, to see that acquiescent expression, for himself. In real life and real time. He wanted to hear that groan of surrender beneath him.  
  
But Eiri wouldn't hear of it. Any advances Tohma made on him were not only rejected, but resented. Tohma's every move had backfired, and made the warrior suspicious of him, reluctant to even get near him. His glances were pointed, his words gruff. And it would do no good to force his hand... while he knew Eiri would likely obey, what would be the pleasure in that? He wanted Eiri to cave in of his own will and come to him, beg him to take the pain and conflict away. Eiri wanted to be a slave, deep in his heart. He couldn't take the pain of making difficult decisions. Tohma saw this weakness in him and seized it with fascination. If he could just turn that key enough times, the door to Eiri's soul would be unlocked and it would be his.  
  
Thus, Tohma kept trying. Despite every rejection, Eiri was still his, and he still teetered dangerously on the brink of inhumanity. As long as he was kept on the emotionless path of a warrior, living his life in fear of the monsters that inhabited reality, there was still a chance that someday he would fall headlong into that abyss. And then he would be Tohma's, body and soul -- never able to reject him again.  
  
Which is why the boy was so dangerous. Eiri had had affairs before -- usually meaningless sex, occasionally a conversation partner to talk about matters of no substance with. Court ladies, or occasionally a lower-ranked samurai out on the battlefield. Tohma was not jealous of these flirtations -- he, too, had his own life, and even a wife whom he genuinely loved. But none of Eiri's flings ever threatened to steal him away from Tohma.   
  
This Shuichi was different, though. Sparks of fire flew from his eyes and lips at the least provocation. He could say the word "No" directly to a superior, and feel justified in doing it. He was young and beautiful and idealistic, and perhaps it was the stage presence that made him so magnetic, but there was something moving about every word he said. Given the amount of time Eiri was spending with the boy, there was ample opportunity for him to be influenced by his passion. Shuichi, in time, could well save Eiri's soul -- and that would ruin him for Tohma forever.  
  
Eiri had made himself clear, though, there in the audience room. There was no future for that relationship now -- Shuichi had his own weaknesses, and he'd never be able to stand being that publicly put down. Now, Tohma mused as he approached Eiri's room, his precious warrior would be lost, confused... closer to the edge than ever before. His lingering feelings for Shuichi would haunt him, and he would beg for Tohma's help. Like he did before. Tohma drew close to the door and raised his hand to tap on the frame.  
  
Just before his knuckles touched the wood, he heard it. A distinct gasp, and the words "Don't tease me, Yuki." He knew the voice. And then Eiri's voice, mumbling something indistinct... a growl... a rustling. And things Tohma just did not want to hear.  
  
He didn't care if the slap of his feet on the hallway's wooden boards interrupted them. He just had to get away from that room as fast as he could, and the noise he made be damned. How could he have misjudged them so badly? Were Eiri's feelings for the boy already so intense that he had lost his priorities... his loyalties.. his mind!? Was it possible, thought Tohma with a sudden shudder, that Eiri could truly be in love with him?  
  
Rage trembled in his limbs, in his whole body. After all he'd done, would he lose Eiri to this child, who wouldn't know what to do with a man like Eiri if he had him? Tohma couldn't stand the thought. Eiri may never be his completely, but he'd be damned before he let him belong to anyone else. Eiri had been his property since that cold windy night and would be forever.   
  
Tohma shouted to a nearby attendant to fetch his war advisers. It was time for a new plan.   
  
-  
  
The first thing Eiri did when he stepped into the audience room was apologize profusely for causing a scene in their previous meeting. Empty words, and infuriating ones to Tohma, who could see in the glow of Eiri's skin a happiness that frustrated him to no end. He didn't feel sorry in the least. Still, Tohma waved the words away like the pesky mosquitos that they were. "Don't give it a second thought," he said sunnily. Eiri made a false show of relaxing. Tohma bit his lip to avoid a swell of rage and moved to seat himself.  
  
"Eiri-san," he said, smiling as warmly as he could manage, "your presence here in the castle is, to my own heart as well as the hearts of everyone, a great blessing. The peace of mind I enjoy in your company is to be treasured." Eiri mumbled the necessary phrases of gratitude, a signal that the formalities could give way to more serious talk. Tohma knotted his brow in consternation. "However," he went on, "there is a storm coming."  
  
"Some longtime enemies of mine from the north are on the move," Tohma continued, rubbing his hands together slowly. "I have heard some disturbing reports from my spies that they have been gathering arms and allies from among my closer neighbors. These are people who have long wanted this land but until now lacked the power to occupy it; and, furthermore, I have been told that some of my so-called allies have joined with my enemies. As you well know, Eiri-san, the siren call of power can weaken the strongest loyalty. And as you also know," he said, staring pointedly at him, "I punish those who betray me and reward well those who defend me."  
  
Eiri grit his teeth, but he kept silent. Tohma sighed resolutely. "My forces are great in number, and my spies have a wealth of information at your command. But we cannot see the future. We need your expertise to survey the battleground and try to deduce their plan -- and we need you to create a powerful enough defensive plan that the enemies will not only be routed, but chastened." Tohma stood up, and his voice boomed throughout the room. "I wish to show them exactly what it means to betray me."  
  
Sitting down, Tohma hung his head in an expression that begged no interruption. Eiri waited for the inevitable sigh of regret, followed by whatever weighty words Tohma was planning to say. It came like clockwork. Resolutely sighing, Tohma looked Eiri straight in the eyes and said in a subdued voice, "And if possible, I want you to lead my men to victory as well."  
  
Both men knew exactly what was meant by this. Tohma was sending Eiri out into the thick of a battle with a dangerous enemy, an enemy that undoubtedly had some trick up its sleeve to attract so many allies and mount such an attack. Eiri would have no idea what he was up against -- such a battle, against an enemy who had not attacked before, would most likely be a bloodbath. Tohma was sending Eiri to probable death.  
  
Tohma had struggled with this decision. Certainly, Eiri was no use to him dead. Why lose the one thing he'd struggled to obtain all his life? But the rage that possessed him whenever he thought about Shuichi in Eiri's bed insisted it. He would not allow his prize to fall into the hands of that child. Eiri was his, belonged to him, body and soul, living or dead. This way at least the boy would get no more control over him. Eiri's death, like his life, would be completely under Tohma's control.  
  
After all, how much more power can you have over a person's life than the power to take it from him?  
  
The idea had filled Tohma with a chilly sense of relief. He felt frozen inside, already weeping, but grim triumph prevailed in his mind. As though Eiri were already dead. He found himself looking forward to it. And then, what would he do to Shuichi? Corner him and accuse him of being the cause of Eiri's death, telling him "If you hadn't gotten in the way..."? Allow him to believe Eiri was alive until he returned from Nara, and then deliver the news to watch him crumple? All the ideas sounded equally delicious to Tohma. He would have fun breaking this strong-willed child, as he had witnessed Eiri break too, all those years ago.  
  
"Well, then, Eiri-san," Tohma said, looking down on his vassal. "Will you undertake this mission? May I count on your protection once again?" And he awaited the answer.  
  
Eiri was not afraid of death. Since his childhood, since his training by his father and other samurai of the Uesugi clan, he had learned to accept death, moving quickly toward it at each turn. A man who knows he will die is a fierce warrior indeed, and Eiri fought with the resolution of one who knows his fate. Never did the idea of a battle grip him with fear of his own mortality. He was actually amazed at how long he had managed to live, given the number of battles he'd fought. He never dreamed he'd see past twenty years, much less thirty.  
  
So what was this paralyzing chill that gripped his heart at Tohma's proclamation?   
  
Perhaps it was that he'd been here too long. Peaceful life in one place settled one into a misleading feeling of domesticity... as though nothing would change. Still, it had not been the first time he'd been called to war after weeks of peace. Such times were rare, but not unheard of. Eiri had always adapted without a problem.  
  
Eyeing Tohma, Eiri thought that perhaps his uneasiness came from the source. Tohma's motives were always questionable, and it always filled Eiri with a sense of dread to carry out one of his lord's orders. Could he really go through with it again? Could he really march into that blind game again, like a puppet, going about his business and playing his inadvertent role in a story he didn't know?   
  
What was Tohma's plan for him? Why send Eiri away now, when he had been so eager to have him home? Was there something going on Tohma did not want him to see? Did Tohma plan to execute Shuichi while Eiri was not around?  
  
At this, a fresh wave of ice poured into Eiri's veins. There were no words for the horror that filled him at that thought. Just images... of long limbs... tender lips... a mind full of flights of fancy... meaningless words babbled on and on in a boyish tenor... flushed skin in muted torchlight... These things were an essential part of the world. They couldn't be snuffed out. He'd be nowhere without them. How could he let anyone, even Tohma, take that away from him?  
  
"No."  
  
The world stumbled past his lips, feeling foreign and wrong. Eiri didn't even realize he'd said it until he saw Tohma's face change -- from expectant to quizzical, and then to dark. "What?" he whispered. "What did you say?"  
  
Guilt assaulted Eiri. What he had just said was unthinkable. It may have been in another language for all the sense it made. One did not refuse one's master. This was the code that ensured survival. A master provided for the vassal who obeyed him. A refusal could mean the loss of everything one had worked for, and worse, the loss of honor. What could Eiri do if he was shamed as a samurai? Become a highway robber and assault victims on the road? Wander the towns as a ronin and fear the reproach of all who had heard of his disgraceful downfall? Cut himself open and lose the world altogether?  
  
But that was only the beginning. These were the concerns that created the system Eiri was a part of. But that system was his world now -- he was a warrior just as much as he was a lover. Perhaps he had forgotten that in these weeks of giddy infatuation. If he denied Tohma now, he would lose the other foundations that made him who he was. He'd be as much without a world as he would without Shuichi.  
  
And Shuichi had said, "It's that simple. If I'm alive, we can still be together someday, even if I have to go away for now." Eiri felt a faint hope lift his heart. There was still a chance of his survival, and of reunion with Shuichi. Of more days of foolish chatting and nights of fevered kisses. Of happiness. And if Eiri disgraced himself now, he would never be able to allow himself that happiness.  
  
He bowed his head. "Have Tatsuha ready in the morning," he said.  
  
-to be continued-  
  
--  
  
Sorry this chapter was so long in the making. I haven't had a chance to work on Chapter 7... my computer broke down (uwanh! One more thing I have to deal with in the last few weeks before I leave for Japan for a year! Kanben shiTE yo MOU!!!)  
  
You guys will like the next chapter. 


	7. Sleepless Beauty

Loyalty  
a Gravitation fan fiction  
by Jennifer Wand  
  
There's more sex in this one. Don't like it.. get out. Oh, but that's right... you do like it..! :P  
  
  
  
VII. Sleepless Beauty  
  
"In carefully scrutinizing the affairs of the past, we find that there are many different opinions about them, and that there are some things that are quite unclear. It is better to regard such things as unknowable."  
  
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai  
  
  
There was something different about Shuichi's performance that night. Some said it was the influence of being told he'd do better in a Noh play -- amazing how fast private conversations became public in the enclosed society of the court. Some said it was the influence of the war fast approaching -- that was no secret, for dozens of soldiers would be leaving the following morning. But even within the bounds of the choreographed wildness of kabuki, Shuichi's vengeful spirits and forsaken maidens trod more carefully upon the stage. They were more subdued, sadder. Never had an audience felt more sympathy for his characters. There was something hopelessly tragic about their every move, the hollow tone of every word. Shuichi was magic.  
  
And after the show, all pretenses dropped. As Shuichi exited the stage door and saw Eiri waiting for him, he broke into a run and flung himself against him. Eiri's arms came up to hold him immediately, and they stood there for a good minute, not saying anything, just standing together. No one dared say a thing. The circle of their embrace was too sacred to be broken.  
  
They walked, solemnly, hand in hand back to Eiri's room, still in silence. And when the door closed behind them, Eiri sat on the mat and drew the boy down onto his lap, kissing him thoroughly. The first sounds to pass between the two were not words.  
  
It felt somehow religious, to be making love on the night before a parting, like nothing should be said lest the severity of it be tempered by light words. Even the passion of it was muted. This was not about physical release or even romance. Eiri was making love to the boy as a final ritual, as a way of letting go. His body was saying goodbye. He was not surprised to look down and see tears in Shuichi's eyes; and it was only mildly surprising for him to feel the wetness in his own eyes as well. Crying, quietly, they shuddered together and fell still.  
  
Who knows how long they lay in the dark, pretending to sleep? Eiri couldn't hazard a guess what time it was. Dimly he knew he really should be sleeping, that his day tomorrow would be long and labored. But he could think about nothing but the measured, even strokes of Shuichi's breath, proof that he was awake. Shuichi's sleeping moments were never so peaceful as when he was faking it.  
  
Finally he gave voice to it. "You're not sleeping," he said.  
  
"Neither were you," came the voice, without a pause.  
  
"How did you know that?"  
  
"You just talked to me," Shuichi said, and Eiri rolled his eyes. "And you talk in your sleep."  
  
"I do not." Eiri was suprised at the petulance in his own voice. Perhaps he had picked up that tone from Shuichi.  
  
"You do," Shuichi said, and Eiri could hear his smile.. a sweetness colored Shuichi's words when he smiled, and it made everything sound a little better. "You say odd things like 'Pi-ka-chu'."  
  
"What's that!?" Eiri scowled at the boy's back. Even in the dark, he could feel his face go hot.  
  
Shuichi rolled over to face him, and through the faintest breath of moonlight, Eiri could see the reflective globes of his eyes and the outline of his face. "Yuki," the boy said in a hushed tone, "I can't sleep."  
  
"I figured as much," Eiri said, trying to scowl, but failing. Unable to resist, he cupped Shuichi's face in his hands and kissed his nose lightly. "Sleepless beauty," he whispered, a smile lighting his lips for a moment.  
  
In his hands, he felt Shuichi's cheeks warm at the compliment. "Yuki," he said again. "Tell me a story."  
  
A strange silence hung in the air then, the innocent question burning into Eiri's mind. He sat up and lit a candle, watching Shuichi's round face illuminate in the dim light. With gentle hands, he drew the boy's head onto his lap and stroked his hair gently. "There's only one story I can think of to tell you," he said.  
  
"Which one is that?" He could feel Shuichi growing drowsy, the effect of a gentle hand and candlelight.  
  
"The one you want to hear," he said. "The one about my past."  
  
Shuichi stiffened. "Are you sure?" he said after a pause.  
  
"When else will I..." Eiri stopped, and started again. "It's past time you should know anyway."   
  
As Eiri told his story, time seemed to waver in the flickering candlelight. Words became sensations, sensations experiences, and Eiri no longer knew if he was telling the story or part of it. On a strange moonlit night, in the enchanted time that lovers share, the past became the present again, like ordinary things come to life as magical beasts when their shadow is cast.  
  
-  
  
  
Uesugi Eiri was young and strong and full of possibilities. He had been born to a fine family, a famous one at that, and trained in the art of war as every male child born to his house was. But Eiri took to it uncommonly well, even for a boy born to a family of warriors. By the time he was thirteen, he was on the battlefield, the proud bringer of enemy heads to the castles of the daimyo he served.  
  
At the head of the army had been Seguchi Tohma. As young as Eiri, laden with ambition and drive, and ruthless in battle, this samurai had risen through the ranks with alarming speed and had secured the allegiance of a great number of locals, from fellow soldiers to farmers. Talk was abundant of a coup, and it seemed only a matter of time before Tohma ousted the current daimyo and took his seat as lord of the southeastern lands.  
  
And then, there was Kitazawa Yuki. Yuki was older; his mettle as a warrior had been proven again and again; and it was he who took Eiri under his wing when he joined the front lines. Early mornings, he would train Eiri in the sword; at the end of the day he would have kind words for him, no matter how his performance in battle had been. "You're alive," Yuki would say as he dressed Eiri's wounds and dried his tears. "That alone puts you ahead of the others. Don't let them tell you there is no honor without death. You can always die with honor some other day."  
  
Was it any wonder that young Eiri fell completely in love with him?  
  
He didn't even know what the feeling was until one day, when a sword had grazed the edge of Eiri's face and threatened to leave a scar. Yuki was treating the tender flesh with caring hands, examining the wound up close with critical eyes. His bangs were brushing Eiri's forehead, his hot breath on Eiri's face. And Eiri felt hot, agitated, like his heart might burst from his chest and dash off through the hills if it raced any harder. "S... sensei..." he managed to breathe.  
  
Yuki gave him a crooked smile, and Eiri's stomach flip-flopped at the sight of it so close. "Hey, you don't need to call me Sensei any more," he said. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Just Yuki is fine."  
  
He was barely a breath away. "Yuki......" Eiri managed, and swallowed. "I..."  
  
Interrupting him, Yuki touched the boy's parted lips with his own briefly. When he drew back, Eiri clapped a hand over his mouth, shocked, bright red. Yuki looked at him seriously. "I know," he said, his eyes seeming to plunge into Eiri's. "You're in love with me, aren't you?" Eiri could do nothing but stare and then, slowly, nod.  
  
"Then let me love you," Yuki whispered hotly. And Eiri did.  
  
News spread quickly throughout the camp -- where gossip was concerned, a military encampment was as bad as a court for flying rumors. Soon everyone knew that Kitazawa Yuki had taken a lover, that it was that young prodigy, Uesugi Eiri. The talk reached every corner of the camp, from the lowest foot soldier's huddled circle to the very tent where leaders assembled to decide the army's fate -- leaders like Seguchi Tohma.  
  
Tohma had taken a liking to Eiri very early on. He was bright and deadly but somehow naive -- perfect modeling clay with which to form the legions that would back his rising ambition. With the start of Yuki and Eiri's affair, Eiri's effectiveness in battle had skyrocketed -- he was ten times more lethal than he'd been, even at such a tender age. Perhaps Yuki had shown him a rougher side to life, and the boy was becoming a man. Such transformations were not unusual... the bonds formed on the battlefield often held an army together. When that bond matured, so did the people sharing it. Tohma could feel the stirrings of a new age begin with the shifting of the tides beneath him. With this army, at this time, he could take the next step.  
  
Gradually, secretively, plans began to take shape. Higher-ranked soldiers held late night meetings with Tohma, and the number of attacks on neighboring armies dwindled, as though the leaders were trying to save their manpower for a later day. The army was on the move, but instead of expanding outward, they were going back toward their homeland and the central town where the daimyo's castle sat. Soon they were camped just outside, and it was on that day that Tohma sent for Eiri.  
  
Hardy-looking, with ruddy cheeks and straggling hairs not-quite-growing along the sides of his face, Eiri stood before Tohma, unsure of why he had suddenly been singled out and called aside. His only real experience with the higher-ranked samurai had been with Yuki, and that, of course, couldn't be further from anything Tohma could possibly expect from him. He fidgeted nervously as he waited for his superior to speak.  
  
Tohma surveyed Eiri's figure and nodded approvingly. This boy was perfect. "You know what is happening tomorrow night," he said, a jarring opening free of the foolish discourse that began most every conversation a polite man had. "You have sworn your allegiance to me, have you not?" Eiri nodded stiffly. "Swear it again now," Tohma commanded.  
  
"I swear my allegiance to you as a vassal and pledge to give my life to protecting you," Eiri answered, bowing his head. His family had long been allied with the Seguchi clan: a sister of his was even to become Tohma's bride, an arrangement made not long after her birth. The oath was one he'd repeated many a time, ever since his childhood.  
  
At the repetition of the pledge, Tohma relaxed slightly. "Tomorrow night we take the daimyo's castle," he said in a low voice. "You are not a fool, Eiri-san, you know of this already." He was right -- Eiri did. "The people have long been demanding this. It is their will, not my own, that drives me to act. And yet, there are some who would see me fail." He scowled darkly and crossed toward Eiri. "Those whose greed outweighs their sense of justice, and who will take a single bushel of rice now over an abundant field later. Even now, Eiri-san, they plot against me."  
  
Eiri trembled briefly. Was he being accused? But Tohma, seeming to survey his expression and approve of it, relaxed his tone. "An all-out siege of the castle, complete with blazing fires and trampling horses, does no good to anyone. It costs innocent lives and the very faith the people are placing in me is forfeit. For that reason, tomorrow night I plan to take a small number of men with me and enter the castle undetected." The unspoken word, assassination, loomed behind each phrase, and Eiri knew it well. "I need a man to watch my back, to make certain any attempts to get to me fail. A warrior cannot strike out in front of him if he is looking behind him, after all. Eiri-san, I have seen your prowess. You shall be that man."  
  
Young Eiri had protested, but Tohma fixed him in place with a glance."I intend to send a message to these greedy traitors," he said, in a voice that gave Eiri a long, stinging shiver. "They will know that the samurai of this area have pledged their loyalty to me, and loyalty will be rewarded. But disloyalty...." Tohma moved in closer to Eiri as he spoke, and the sounds hissed from his mouth like the speech of a snake. "Disloyalty will come back to you a thousand times... and it will wreak a very dire revenge."  
  
  
  
  
How they had managed it Eiri never knew, but somehow when they crept through the shadows to a small door behind the main tower of the castle, there was no guard waiting and no lock. Tohma just slid the portal open and slipped through the entryway, his men following him, and Eiri bringing up the rear, tailing the group with unsteady steps. The darkness seemed to whisper to him of secrets he didn't want to hear, and he felt his pulse pounding in his wrists. The beat throbbed through his hand when he clutched his sword for comfort.  
  
Like liquid, the group swam through corridors noiselessly, with no sleepless courtesans or suspicious samurai to cross their path. The easiness of it all bothered Eiri. He found himself waiting for the other shoe to drop. The longer they traveled the castle's halls without being discovered, the more tension built up inside his veins. He felt like he was being pulled taut, a string quivering dangerously on the verge of snapping.  
  
Once they reached an ornate door, Tohma turned back and signaled for Eiri to wait. He and his men disappeared through the door after looking around and nodding to each other briefly, and Eiri was left alone.   
  
With the minute sound of the door's closing, the air seemed to chill around Eiri. He exhaled, half-expecting to see his breath as he did. Shivering, he looked around furtively, and then decided it would be more prudent to step into the shadows himself. His eyes darted back and forth, looking for the most convenient place to hide. Finally, he decided on an impressive-looking wooden column, and stepped behind it.  
  
He stepped straight into someone.  
  
The beginning of a curse, stifled and completed in a whisper, sprang from a nearby mouth, and nearby shadows stirred. Eiri sprang backward on reflex, his nerves on fire. It was another minute before he realized why his face was hot as well. He knew the scent of this man.   
"Yuki?" he whispered tentatively. In response, the figure hesitated, then slowly eased out of the shadows.   
  
"Oh, it's you," Yuki said, relaxing visibly once he came into sight. From behind him, another two men came into the light. Eiri knew them as longtime companions of Yuki's, and he nodded politely. "You surprised me!" Eiri exclaimed, letting his own shoulders relax. "So Seguchi-sama asked for your help too? He didn't mention anything about it to me when he asked me to..."  
  
Eiri's voice trailed off. Yuki's eyes had gone wide, and he had begun to glance at his companions furtively. A scowl darkened the expression of one, and the other bit his lip nervously. Eiri watched the wordless exchange with trepidation, a sickening prickle of realization biting at the bottom of his stomach. "Yuki..." he finally whispered, his limbs feeling like lead. "You're not..."  
  
"So Seguchi's got you playing watchdog?" Yuki interrupted. "Better yet. Step aside, boy."  
  
The beginnings of tears stung behind Eiri's eyes. "Why did you do this, Yuki?" he said, unable to keep the mournful moan out of his voice. "Aren't you loyal to Seguchi-sama too?"  
  
"Step aside!" Yuki insisted.  
  
"Why?" Eiri repeated.  
  
"Move!"  
  
The barking order gave Eiri the charge he needed to refuse outright. "I won't," he declared, bracing his feet firmly against the floor as though expecting Yuki to rush him.  
  
Yuki's face turned impossibly dark for a moment. Then a soft smile flickered across his face. Gently, he began to move toward Eiri. Suddenly immobilized, the boy could do nothing but swallow as Yuki lifted a battle-calloused hand to touch his face. "I'm sorry," he said to Eiri. "I scared you, didn't I?"  
  
"Yuki..." Eiri's voice was choked with tears. The soldier pressed his lips to his forehead, his hand reaching down to caress his shoulder and side. Eiri shut his eyes as the man's other arm came around him in a tight embrace. The warmth of Yuki's fingers was everywhere, searing as they wandered, and Eiri's eyes opened again when he realized how intimate their situation had become. Stinging with heat, he looked up at Yuki's face, trying to muster up enough strength for a protest.  
  
But his lover wasn't even looking at him. Yuki made a jerking motion with his head, urging on his allies. They started to move around to the side, slipping past the pair. Even as his fingertips pressed against Eiri's hips dangerously, Yuki's mind was nowhere near the boy.   
Eiri's excitement collided with a fresh wave of ice through his veins, and he thought he'd turn to steam right there. Pressure built up and released all through him - sexuality, anger, frustration, betrayal, confusion. A mad jumble. "Yuki....!!" he finally whispered in a cracking voice, pushing himself away. But it was too late, and with one nod of Yuki's head the two men beside them had pushed Eiri up against a wall, holding him fast.  
  
"So this is the one you told us about, then?" one of them said.   
  
Throwing back his shoulders, Yuki surveyed the hapless Eiri with a leering grin. "That's right," he says. "Takes it like a woman, screams like crazy but always wants more. He's loads of fun."  
  
Horror cascaded through Eiri's body in waves. It didn't seem possible that it was really Yuki talking this way. The Yuki he'd given his heart, his body, his everything to, the Yuki he'd loved, with this sadistic smile... He tried to say something, anything, but the words wouldn't come out.  
  
"I want a turn with him later," said the other, running a hand over Eiri's face. Eiri tried to bite at him, but his neck wouldn't turn. "He's such a cute one." Slipping a hand inside his kimono, the man scratched at Eiri's chest briefly. "What do you say? We know you love it."  
  
"You want to have some fun now?" the first man said. "We can go after Seguchi."  
  
In response, Yuki made a sweeping bow and grinned the most terrifying grin Eiri had ever seen.  
  
"After you," he said.  
  
  
  
"After you."  
  
  
  
The words echoed surreally in Eiri's head. Time and space stopped; the air ceased to move. All at once the world was strange and muddled. Lights seemed to flicker. Bits of reality came floating in and out of darkness, all painful, none tangible. Eiri had the feeling he was leaving his own body, his own mind, and replaying the entire moment as an odd, disjointed dream.   
  
Yuki's face, his smile... Yuki, whom Eiri had loved, with such a smile...  
  
One of the men opening his kimono, forcing Eiri's head down, telling him "That's right, boy, you know what to do..."  
  
Yuki, whom Eiri still loved, saying such words...  
  
"After you."  
  
Eiri choking, grasping the wall looking for a handhold, sputtering, trying to cry out and failing, trying to say anything and failing, his hand feeling flat wall, the warmth of his own body, then cold metal, a familiar grip, no, a handle, the handle of his sword...  
  
Yuki...  
  
...and then from somewhere a scream rose up into the air, starting low and soft but rising in pitch and intensity as the whole world went white and then exploded into crimson and memory disconnected from mind just after Eiri realized the scream was his own...  
  
then, nothing.  
  
Tohma came bursting through the door with Eiri's name on his lips. With eyes wide as the moon, he took in the situation, his followers spilling into the room behind him. Blood stained not just the floors, but the walls as well, and the three corpses lay like lumps of black coal spattered with red, faces frozen in shocked agony, one of them obscenely exposed. The scent of death hung over the room like a thick black smoke, and it made Tohma's eyes water.  
  
And at the far point of the ungodly triangle of cadavers, kneeling with the head of one corpse lifted onto his lap, a trembling figure. Silent, blood-soaked, tears mingling with the traces of dried liquid on his face, hands clutching the shaft of his sword so tight they bled...   
  
Eiri was whispering something, that much Tohma could see as he stumbled toward him, waves of fear and relief shooting through him. When he came close enough to see whose body was cradled in the young sentry's lap, Tohma's blood chilled in realization. His men watched, speechless, behind him, as Tohma sprang forward to embrace the shaking Eiri.   
  
"...dead... dead... Yuki... I... I... dead..."  
  
Eiri's eyes lifted at the sudden embrace. The present returned, though jaggedly... he saw the arms around him, he felt his own quivering, felt the stickiness of blood on his hands, heard his own disjointed words. He saw the open door, saw the path of blood that had trailed from Tohma's sword as he had come toward him.  
  
Blood on Tohma, blood on him...  
  
Tohma broke the embrace to gaze at Eiri. He tried in vain to catch his eyes, but Eiri couldn't stop looking around erratically, like a spastic child. He smoothed Eiri's hair and tried to soothe him with words. "Thank you, Eiri-san," said Tohma in as gentle a tone as he could muster. "You protected me. You saved my life. Eiri-san..."  
  
Blood on Yuki... dead Yuki...  
  
"Dead... I..."  
  
"Look at me, Eiri-san," Tohma pressed. "You proved your loyalty to me. You are an excellent samurai. I told you loyalty would be rewarded. You will be rewarded, Eiri-san. You must let me take care of you from now on. I will see that you want for nothing. You are precious to me, Eiri-san..." Gingerly, he lifted Eiri's sword out of his grasp, and the bleeding palms were left shaking in midair.  
  
Yuki's blood on me... my blood on me...  
  
Eiri lowered his hands to the dead man's face and caressed it, leaving streaks of blood along the corpse's cheeks. Tohma took them and pressed them to his own, feeling the blood run stickily onto his own hands. "We have to go, Eiri-san. We need to leave this place. Do you understand?"  
  
With the touch of his hands to warm, living flesh, Eiri seemed to focus for the first time since Tohma had discovered the scene. "S...Seguchi-sama..." he whispered weakly.   
  
Tohma smiled, feeling tears of relief spill over. "Yes. Yes, Eiri-san, it's me. Can you hear me?" The boy nodded weakly, and Tohma finally succeeded in ushering him out of the castle. It was not long after they'd cleared the final door, free on the plains, before the first shriek echoed from within the castle walls.  
  
At the sound of it, Eiri stopped. His soul seemed to resonate with that first horrified scream, as though he was stuck in an unending moment of realization. He fell to his knees. "Yuki...!" he repeated. As though answering his cry, the wind on the plain began to pick up, and a howling sound filled the sky. Dust rose from the ground and swirled in ever-changing patterns across the landscape.  
  
Safe in the hollow of a hill, shadowed from any pursuing guards, Tohma felt safe enough to kneel down before the boy again. "Eiri-san," he shouted, his voice straining to rise above the mournful moan of the wind. "Look at me. Listen to me. You did well. Eiri-san!" he repeated urgently when the young warrior wavered dangerously as though on the verge of collapse. "It's me!"  
  
"Seguchi-sama..." The strange, amber-tinted eyes wavered. "Seguchi-sama... I killed Yuki..."  
  
"You killed a traitor," Tohma insisted. "Justice comes to those who are disloyal. Yours is the sword of justice... my dear Eiri-san. Be proud."  
  
"Yuki's dead..." And then, all at once, Eiri's half-mad rambling became a wail of pure sorrow.   
"I should be dead... I'm the one who should die!"  
  
Tohma glanced nervously at his companions. Aware of the importance of the moment, they were busy watching the horizon for signs of pursuing armies. Relaxing, Tohma again took Eiri by the shoulders, holding him firmly upright. "Eiri-san, I want you to swear to me you won't die without my knowledge. I won't let you go. You're too important to me."  
  
Black spots seemed to hover before Eiri's eyes. He clutched out blindly, finding warmth he only vaguely knew to be Tohma's. "S... Seguchi-s..."  
  
"Swear to me, Eiri-san! I order it!" Dust was filling Tohma's mouth. The irritation on his tongue was more than he could bear.  
  
Eiri's eyes closed involuntarily against the assault of wind and sand. He choked on the current, strength ebbing from him. "I... swear..."   
  
Tohma embraced him furiously. "I won't let you go, Eiri-san," he demanded, no longer caring that the storm's fury caked his words with air and dirt. "I can't. I need you..." But Eiri barely heard. He had the vision of something precious, a tiny star of gold, dropping away from him into an abyss. He reached out for it, trying so hard to catch it again, but it was just out of reach, just a fingertip's length away and yet completely lost to him. He lunged forward again, but the bonds that held him back were the bonds of Tohma's arms... they held him fast, strangled him, as the world went black.  
  
  
-  
  
  
"I took his name after that day," Eiri said. "And I've remained in Seguchi's service until this day, and will for the rest of my life. That night he saved me. So he will always be a special existence to me." Opening his eyes (somehow he had closed them as he told, no, relived that story), he looked down at Shuichi, saying, "Now that you know, can you still say you love me?"  
  
He was greeted with a snore.   
  
Groaning with the sort of frustration that is so familiar it becomes a kind of comfort, Eiri gently lifted Shuichi's head off his lap and eased him down onto the futon again. He blew out the candle with a silent puff of breath and settled in behind the boy, breathing in the scent of his hair. Shuichi made a funny sleeping noise in return.  
  
A pang of sadness flew through Eiri, and he brought one hand up to gingerly touch the very ends of the straggling strands of dark hair. In the quietest of whispers, he confessed, "But you saved me too... and for that I thank you. Shuichi."  
  
And in the darkness, just before sleep finally took him under its wing, Yuki Eiri whispered the words that he could never say aloud. The words that he could only trust to the night. Words that would return to him whenever the darkness fell... the truth that can be felt, but not seen. The truth that only the darkness would ever hear.   
  
And in the darkness, Shindou Shuichi heard, and smiled.  
  
  
-to be concluded- 


	8. Shining Collection

Loyalty  
  
by Jennifer A. Wand  
  
a Gravitation fan fiction  
  
VIII. Shining Collection  
  
"The Way of the Samurai is found in death."  
  
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai  
  
Eiri had expected to wake long before Shuichi and steal away while the boy still slumbered. It would be easier to part with him thus -- no last looks into each other's eyes, no awkward letting go for the last time. He could simply roll over, gaze at the boy's sleeping face, roll his eyes at the drool that'd undoubtedly be slipping from his lips, and run one hand gently over the ruffled tuft of dark hair. Shuichi would sigh and mumble in his sleep, and for an instant Eiri would be afraid he'd wake up. But another mumbled endearment later, Shuichi's snores would return in full force and Eiri would be as relieved as he was annoyed at them. At that moment he'd whisper his small, sacred goodbyes and be gone.  
  
Warmed by the vision, Eiri's eyes opened gradually but steadily, without hesitation. Slowly, but again without hesitation, he rolled over onto his side to gaze at an empty spot where a lover had once lain. And still slowly, Eiri came to the realization that he was alone in the room.  
  
He bolted upright with a start. "Damn kid!" he cursed, punching the pillow beside him with such vigor that it split and sent rice pouring everywhere. Unsatisfied, Eiri grabbed at handfuls of the stuff and threw it about wildly. It made a satisfying clatter against the paper panels of the wall. "Stupid brat!"   
  
Eiri continued to curse and rage until his anger had gone and he began to realize the absurdity of it all. What was he doing, anyway? Blaming Shuichi for stealing a moment that he'd planned to steal himself? And what good would such a moment do anyway? Romances were best severed cleanly, not subjected to endless rituals that left ties dangling in the air like streaks of blood. He ought to feel grateful that Shuichi acted as kaishaku -- the executioner designated to chop off the head of a condemned man should he lack the resolve to commit seppuku.  
  
Besides, Eiri had an army to lead today. His mind needed to be full of strategies, tactics, calculations -- everything that required a cool head. Foolish words spoken by moonlight and raging feelings spinning out of control -- those were useless trivialities, things that encouraged a man to be absent-minded, to lose track of details. And as a man of war, Eiri needed to be level-headed and mindful of everything.   
  
And being a man who never overlooked a single detail, Eiri was careful to wipe every last tear from his eyes before leaving his room to join Tatsuha in the stables.  
  
--  
  
Not a detail was lost to Eiri's eyes on the journey north, either. He was determined to see everything, note everything in his mind about the terrain he crossed, so as to have an advantage should the enemy press forward. But a man who looks at everything never sees anything, Eiri would have done well to remember. He concentrated so hard on each turn, each broken branch and fallen leaf, that the one before it vanished instantly from his mind. And then, every so often Tatsuha would stumble, and Eiri would be jolted back to reality. He'd remember then what he was trying so hard not to think about, and he'd be lost to a reverie of melancholy until Tatsuha's clumsy feet shook him awake again.  
  
The cycle continued for endless minutes as the sun climbed high into the sky and Eiri trudged on toward the waiting battle camp. It was only when Tatsuha gave what seemed very close to a human cry of panic, and nearly launched Eiri forward off his saddle, that he bothered to take a look at the territory he'd been traversing. Gazing over his shoulder, Eiri felt his bones chill with dread. This was no ordinary rough-and-tumble forest trail. They were mountains he'd been crossing, with sheer cliffs and passes so narrow a single man on horseback could hardly travel comfortably through. How Eiri had made it through without noticing was a testament to his skill - or his distraction.  
  
He patted Tatsuha absently on the mane. "You're a scatterbrain, but at least you're good for something," he murmured in as close to an approximation of fondness as he could manage. Was that hoarse, hollow tone the best he could muster? Eiri wondered, frowning. Is that how he'd spoken to Shuichi all this time? Were those half-insult compliments all he'd managed to convey? He wanted to stop asking such questions, wanted to pretend he didn't know the answers, wanted to forget he'd never have another chance to change them.  
  
Then he turned his eyes forward and abruptly forgot.   
  
If death had a sound, these plains would be howling with it. There was no battle to be planned here - the battle was raging already, and the sickening array of corpses, some with no heads and some half-eaten by wild beasts, indicated it had been raging for days. The clash of swords and the stampeding of hooves resounded. A mixture of shiny and weathered helmets dotted the view like perverse Go stones, surrounding each other and occasionally dropping out of sight. Some of these men had been in battle for days, Eiri realized, and some of them had moved out just this morning. Seguchi had doubtless been sending out soldiers every day, the newest handful leaving just a few hours before Eiri himself did.  
  
What to do first in such a fray? Surely there must be someone in command here, Eiri thought, though the line between battle leader and foot soldier tended to disappear when the heat of a fight raged too intensely. Like metal that turned liquid before too searing a flame, the soldiers melted into each other, becoming just men, moving molecules in an organism too wild to control. Still, the shape and size of a man's helmet often gave a clue as to his rank, and Eiri spurred on a reluctant Tatsuha toward the sight of some finer-looking headpieces.  
  
Tatsuha plunged down the slope toward the river of men, and when horse and rider reached the plain, they were immediately enveloped in the swarm. The first swinging sword, slashing its way toward Eiri's neck, submerged him in the battle. The distant helmets he'd been seeking faded from sight and mind, and like a man suddenly thrown into the sea, Eiri floundered. Destinations and purposes took a back seat to the instinctive, bloody business of staying alive. It was all he could do to stay seated atop Tatsuha, dodging and meeting the rain of frenzied blows with his own steel. His mind fought to regain his footing.  
  
And then, the gears eased into motion. Eiri's battle senses had been dulled from too many days where the worst attacker was a boy's flesh and the greatest tension was the taut string of sexuality. But now they shook off their rust and snapped into place. Even a man tossed overboard finds his stride after a minute of panicked thrashing, and so it was for Eiri. Each blur of motion, each sound and whisper of wind, became a potential threat, and as quickly as he registered them he responded to them, dodging and countering with the skill that had made him famous. As though Tatsuha were his own flesh and blood, Eiri reared him up, urged him down, maneuvered him as though his horse, too, were obeying his reflexes. As he fought, Eiri became a separate being from his body; instincts and training alone held him on the battlefield, and his mind was free to roam.  
  
He couldn't understand Seguchi's thinking. Why send forces out to defend an area whose own natural barriers were nearly impenetrable? Only the sureness of his steed had gotten Eiri alone through those mountains. An enemy would have to be foolhardy to attack from this direction. A few well-placed assassins could pick off the entire army as they passed single file along the line of the cliffs.  
  
Why, indeed, hadn't the enemy employed that very tactic? It was a simple and often-used one. First, send in a handful of assassins along the route the defending army will take. By the time they reach the battlefield, their morale will have dwindled along with their numbers. Such a plan should have occurred to these attackers without a moment's hesitation. And yet they were fighting as though they had no plan, fighting as though they had been taken by surprise...  
  
The revelation sounded inside Eiri's head with a resounding clatter. These soldiers weren't trying to move forward - they were only trying to stand their ground. Seguchi's army wasn't defending. They were pushing forward - Seguchi was on the offensive!   
  
Facts began to rattle through Eiri's head like pebbles in a rainstorm. Seguchi was attacking - he'd been sending soldiers out here for days on end - this battle had been going on, out of control, for days. And yet he'd told Eiri he was sending him out to plan a line of defense, as though the fighting had yet to begin. Seguchi Tohma had lied to him, had deliberately sent him out into a raging battle he wouldn't be able to shape or control. Haphazard as they were, the facts were clear. Tohma had sent Eiri out here to die.  
  
The only question was, why?  
  
The answer probably occurred to Eiri immediately - it was too simple to miss. But something - perhaps survival instinct - kept him from realizing it. He knew he couldn't die without knowing the reason why. Until he figured it out, he'd manage to stay alive one way or another. So maybe, just maybe, the part of him that wanted to survive hid the truth behind a veil of thinly disguised questions. Had he committed some offense at court? Spoken to Seguchi in a way he shouldn't have? No - such an infraction would result in a direct order to commit seppuku. Seguchi had employed subtlety and deceit here. Perhaps he was trying to protect Eiri from something - a shame to come, perhaps? Would Seguchi rather see Eiri die than see him face some sort of scandal? But why not warn Eiri himself about such a scandal? It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense.  
  
A long, sweeping blow came dangerously close to grazing Eiri's shoulder, and Tatsuha gave a shrill whinny of fear. Shaken back into the present, Eiri whirled around and cut the man down, audaciously, as though warning the others not to come any closer. It worked - the circle of soldiers fell back a few paces, and the victim himself screamed as he fell from his mount, his eyes widening with horror. Foolish man, Eiri though. What right did he have to fear death, when it should have been the very road he walked? He should be more than willing to die for his lord.   
  
Yet, for the first time, Eiri felt the stirring of an uncomfortable thought. Did it hurt that much to die, he wondered (even as his sword slashed out again in its lethal duty)? Was the moment of death such that even a samurai might wish it otherwise? Might he someday find himself regretting the life he led, regretting that he hadn't lived for his own sake, gone where he'd wanted to go...  
  
...been with the ones he loved...  
  
...that was it, he realized, scowling. It was Shuichi's fault he even had the nerve to think this way for a second. The child's weakness was becoming his own. What had he said that night? "Who wants to go out and die just because some person you've never met your whole life says so?" Utter foolishness. He was quite right to tear himself away from the boy -  
  
- to tear Eiri away from Shuichi -  
  
Eiri's stomach gave a lurch, and he leaned forward for a nauseated moment. That had been Seguchi's motivation after all. It wasn't a scandal he could have warned him about, for this was a scandal only in Tohma's eyes. Eiri had tried, year after year, to let Seguchi know that he owed him loyalty as a lord and gratitude as the one who sustained him and took him in... but nothing more. Seguchi had wanted him as a lover - no - as a conquest - but Eiri had never felt the inclination to submit. Over the years, Tohma had eased away from overt approaches, and Eiri had foolishly thought his infatuation had subsided. But now, he realized, he hadn't let go at all. Seguchi Tohma was just as intent on conquering Eiri as he'd been at first. And he was just as conniving in his methods. The same man Eiri considered his benefactor was nothing but a greedy child smashing the toys he couldn't have to himself.   
  
He'd betrayed him.  
  
The top of the world came smashing down around Eiri's head, and he gasped for air, a man suddenly in space, a fish suddenly above the surface of the water. A new atmosphere whirled around him, one that suffocated him with its strangeness. But the new scenery was not without its wonders, and Eiri's eyes fell open, stunned. This was the world without unswerving loyalty, without complete annihilation of self. This was the world where he - Yuki Eiri - was more than just a shield made of power and pride. He was a human, a self, without any boundaries or barriers. Gravity dropped away. He could fly.  
  
All the personal desires he'd submerged in his years of servitude came flooding back. Eiri was drowning in a sea of want. He wanted it all back. His life, his will, his own reasons to keep going.  
  
And his thoughts flew to Shuichi. What had he thrown him away for? For Seguchi? The thought was laughable now. For his pride, his honor? What were they worth to him without a lord to protect? Now he had only himself, and all he wanted for himself was life. All he wanted were the things he'd scorned as unimportant and selfish - a lover's laugh, a smile, the feeling that beauty and sunshine might go on forever as long as he could wake up with warmth beside him - as long as he could indulge in the pettiest of arguments, the most selfish of complaints. Knowing that they masked the brightest and surest joy he'd ever allowed himself to feel.  
  
He wanted it back. He wanted love back.  
  
Eiri's hands fell slack on the reins. His whole body seemed to fill with water. Tears spilled from his eyes; the battlefield blurred. His whole soul ached, and before he could stop himself the name flew from his lips. "Shuichi..."  
  
It was one moment. But one moment was enough.  
  
The blow came in from the side - Eiri almost didn't see it. But he felt it like the rumble of thunder resonating off courtyard stones, and he heard the high, shrill wail of death flying through the air. It was the sound he'd known his whole life he'd hear one day, and as steely gray eclipsed his vision, he closed his eyes to embrace it.  
  
Another half a moment and another thousand thoughts, as though time stood still. Yes, there was the sound of metal tearing flesh, there was the odor of blood and the cold splash of it on his flushed face. And the pain... no, it was curiously absent, although Eiri was sure a part of him (which part? he didn't know) had been ripped away. Perhaps the cut had killed him instantly - perhaps his soul had been torn from his body. He could, after all, see himself from behind, falling, in tortured slow motion - could see the blood flying from an exposed white shoulder - but the eyes that turned to face him weren't amber, they were bright, deep blue...  
  
and all at once Eiri knew. It was his heart they'd cut, his heart that was falling before his eyes, smiling through eyes watering with pain. His heart, and the man he'd given it to.  
  
Eiri sprang forward, flying off Tatsuha's back, and stretched out both arms to reach him. Shuichi's name flew from his lips as he willed his body forward - let his hands touch anything, anything at all, a finger, a strand of hair - but reach him! Then, finally, fingers curled around a wrist, and jerking Shuichi's body back, Eiri guided it to fall onto his own. Together they plunged, tasting mud and blood as their bodies collided with the grass of the battlefield.  
  
Eiri scrambled to a sitting position and surveyed Shuichi's wound. It was a long, deep gash running along the line of his collarbone, and blood gushed forth deep and red, shining almost unnaturally in its slickness. Eiri pressed his hands to it, trying to stem the flow, and the liquid bubbled over his fingers obstinately. Shuichi's eyes were open, and they tried to settle their focus onto Eiri's face.   
  
"Yuki... are you okay?" he managed, in a weak voice.  
  
"Am I okay?" Eiri raged at him, still trying to calm the fury of Shuichi's stubborn wound. "Never mind that! What the hell are you doing in a place like this?"  
  
"You seem okay. I'm glad," Shuichi smiled with pale lips, closing his eyes.  
  
"Open your eyes, damn you!" Eiri called out in a panic. "What were you thinking!? This is no place for you! Why are you here?"  
  
Shuichi's eyes fluttered open. A haze of confusion lay over them, and his brow furrowed. "But... you're the one who said so, Yuki!" he whispered, the protestation in his voice weakened by pain. A convulsion wracked his body, and Eiri leaned forward in despair. But Shuichi looked up at him again and continued.  
  
"You're the one who asked me... wasn't there anything I'd die for? And you said you hoped... you'd be the one..."   
  
If Eiri had raised his head, he might have noticed that a strange calm had fallen around them. The battle raged... no force on earth could stop that... but here on this small patch of ground that swelled upward like an offering to the gods, horses and riders turned away to allow this small, sacred scene to take place. Perhaps it was merely the chaotic tide of battle; perhaps, deep in the heart of even the most barbaric swordsman, no one could allow the connection between these two souls to be broken. But Eiri would never know to guess which. His whole concentration was focused here on this wound -- this man -- this life which was so close to being lost to him.  
  
"You're a damn fool!" he wept. "Did you think that I wanted you to die?"   
  
"But you were right," Shuichi said, in a voice so hollow and thick with pain that Eiri's bones felt brittle at the sound of it. "To you, loyalty is everything. And I've never been loyal to anything in my whole life. But I should have been. I should have been ready to die in an instant for you. I'm sorry I wasn't before."  
  
"Fool!" Eiri broke in, his heart stinging as though a thousand needles were grazing its sides. How could this child change his mind now, when Eiri himself had just realized how wrong he'd always been? "You were the one who was right. Loyalty is nothing. It's a burden, and it betrays you. You were right all along... and I was the fool." His tears splashed onto Shuichi's pale face like bitter rain.  
  
At the taste of them, Shuichi's blue eyes quavered, and then he smiled weakly, gently. "Yuki. It's okay," he said. "I've already decided."   
  
Eiri shook his head in panicked fear. "No," was all he said.  
  
"It's important to you... and you're important to me." Another shudder wracked Shuichi's body. Eiri leaned forward, terrified.   
  
With visible effort, Shuichi raised a white hand to his chest and covered Eiri's fingers with it. Ivory on scarred tan on liquid red. "Yuki," he said, and his eyes fluttered closed. Eiri trembled.   
  
There was a horrible, silent moment where Eiri thought he'd lost him. But the hand on his wavered slightly, and bleary eyes opened. "It's okay," Shuichi said simply. And he smiled.  
  
That smile was like no other Eiri had ever seen. He couldn't even believe it was Shuichi's -- since when could he smile with such calm, such quiet wisdom, such enlightenment in the face of death? He knew Shuichi's other smiles, of course. The I did well in my performance smile, the I just wrote another terrible poem smile, the I got Yuki to kiss me smile, the I know something you don't know smile, the isn't it good to be alive smile...  
  
...Eiri had memorized them all, he realized with a tiny gasp. He'd been collecting them, storing them like jewels in a secret locked box in his mind, to be opened only in times of despair. And now, in the moment he needed them most, his storehouse of memories had not only resurfaced, but grown -- this last, beautiful smile settling like one great, sparkling jewel to crown a shining collection.  
  
Now he understood. Shuichi hadn't been right and Eiri wrong. The truth of it all lay somewhere between them, and it was in coming together that they'd been able to discover it. Loyalty came not from a cold obligation or a businesslike trading of strengths and weaknesses. The true core of it was deeper than any of that.   
  
The deepest bonds, after all, were bonds of family. Mothers died protecting their children. Brothers labored to feed their sisters. And husbands went to war, fought and died on battlefields like this, for the wives they'd cherished more than any land or possession. Perhaps, long ago, two brothers swore to protect each other even when they married and moved away... and their families swore the same. And a generation later, a son who loved his father learned about the oath and pledged to protect it with his own life, his own family... until the generations and the families had obscured the past, and the reason for the bond was no longer to be questioned. Now retainers fought for lords, blindly, without knowing that they were at heart all brothers.   
  
But Eiri knew now. His understanding was instant and absolute.   
  
Any bond of loyalty... any bond worth protecting... was at its core a bond of love.   
  
Like a man enlightened, Eiri moved without hesitation. The tears gone, his eyes were clear and sparkling. For the first time, he smiled back at the boy who lay below him. And when he spoke, his voice was pure and steady.   
  
"I'm not going to let you die for me," he said.  
  
"Yuki..."  
  
The smile broke into a grin.  
  
"I'll die for you first," he said.  
  
Driving his sword into the earth beside him, Eiri grabbed hold of it and pulled himself up to full height. On the small hill, he stood just a head higher than the other soldiers, and his shadow fell long and striking along the earth. It was barely a moment before a head turned... a blank-faced foot soldier, probably more at ease barefoot in a rice field than armor-clad in battle. Eiri addressed him. "You there!" he bellowed, so impressively that other heads turned as well. "Do you want the head of Yuki Eiri, of the Uesugi clan?"  
  
The man shook his head in fear. But unnoticing, Eiri made a sweeping motion with his shoulders and the gorgeous helmet fell into his hand. He tossed it to the man. "Take this helmet," he ordered. "Put it on a head and burn it until the face is unrecognizable. Any daimyo will know it-- and if he doubts, ask Seguchi Tohma. You'll be paid well for it."  
  
There was a tug at his feet. Shuichi was grasping his ankle, concerned. "Yuki, what are you doing?" he croaked.  
  
Eiri looked down at him, the smile still lighting his face. "Yuki is dead," he said, a soaring sensation of freedom filling him as he said it. "Yuki then and Yuki now. From today, I'm just Eiri."   
  
Seeing the incoherent questions fill Shuichi's eyes, he bent down, raising his head briefly to give a shrill whistle. Tatsuha, who had been pacing anxiously just outside of the fray, began to race toward his master. Carefully, Eiri pulled Shuichi up and onto his back, whispering under his breath as he did, "We're getting out of here."  
  
At the shock of being lifted, Shuichi winced loudly, his hand flying to Eiri's wrist and grasping tightly. "Why?..." he managed to whisper as the world gave a lurch and he was suddenly astride Tatsuha, his limp body lying across Eiri's broad back. His wound stained the magnificent armor.  
  
Eiri spurred Tatsuha into a run. No battle could stop the horse from flying now... yet, nobody tried. They were still surrounded by the strange halo of quiet, like the eye of a hurricane. If Eiri noticed it this time, however, he gave it no thought. It was as natural as the movement of air to him. Of course time and space should bend, if need be, to give him these most important moments of his life. He was determined not to waste them.   
  
"You haven't figured it out yet?" he said softly. One of his hands reached back to ruffle Shuichi's sweat-drenched hair. "Because I'm loyal to you."  
  
Shuichi gave a gasp, then slumped over on Eiri's back. The pain in the wound had caught up with him, and he'd fainted. Eiri waited until the faint breaths in his ear became regular. "Damn kid you are," he murmured, "but I love you and you're not going to die." The promise fell into the shadows between Tatsuha's flying hooves as he carried the two far away from battles and bloodshed... far away from the world.  
  
--  
  
"I am going to die."  
  
"Shut up."  
  
"I mean it... I'm going to die!"  
  
"Then hurry up and do it, you damned monkey child. You're hurting my head."  
  
"Eiri... you're not listening!"  
  
Eiri whirled. "How can I not be listening when you're shouting in my ear?" he roared. "You said you're going to die if you don't go see this guy Sakura..."   
  
"SA-KU-MA," Shuichi pouted. "Sakuma Ryuichi. And he's not 'this guy.' He's a GOD. You have no idea what him inviting me to attend his theater class means for my career. The man's a genius."  
  
"He sounds like a freak," Eiri grumbled, rubbing his forehead. He lumbered over to the closet and stuffed the futon inside, sliding the wooden door closed again. "Where did you say he lives again, on a rabbit farm? And if you want to go see him, go see him. I'm not stopping you."  
  
"Yes, you are!" Shuichi stamped his foot.  
  
"I've got to work too!" rejoined a flustered Eiri. "Believe it or not, a ronin for hire isn't the stablest job in the world. I have to take what I can get!"  
  
Not satisfied with the spoiled child routine, Shuichi moved on to a different tactic. Wrapping his arms around Eiri, he blinked up at him with big, adoring eyes. "But without you there, I'll be so lonely... who'll keep me warm at night?" He nuzzled his neck. "Won't you miss me too, Eiri?" He let the sound of the name rumble, long and low, into his lover's skin. Without realizing it, Eiri allowed his hands to burrow into Shuichi's hair. He kissed the top of his head feverishly. Shuichi's hands moved downward. Eiri groaned.  
  
The sound of his own voice shocked him into reality. "Shuichi... why do you do this to me?" he muttered, pushing him away. The sudden lack of contact was painful. But he couldn't quite bring himself to look away from Shuichi's sparkling eyes. They were too blue, too achingly beautiful, even as the simplicity of the stare frustrated him. Beneath Shuichi's collarbone, Eiri could see the very edge of the scar that was a reminder of a year ago, the scar that had sealed their life together when it healed. Vaguely, he regretted that he'd hurried to put the futon away for the morning. Still, the hut they shared was too small to leave it lying around all day just in case he had an amorous inclination. He leaned forward again, kissed the boy's lips, then bent down to touch the long, jagged mark with his own lips. "Why do you do this to me?" he repeated, this time breathing the words into soft, pink skin.  
  
"Because I can," came the simple reply, which ended in a soft sigh.  
  
Eiri couldn't resist that sound. He repeated what he'd done, trying to evoke it again, but the answer this time was just a giggle. "All right, all right," he groaned, throwing up his hands in acquiescence. "What the hell."  
  
Shuichi's seduction vanished. "Yahoo!" he yelped, giving a little jump.  
  
"But I'm not doing it for you," Eiri pointed a finger at the celebrating Shuichi and frowned. "It's for Tatsuha. For some reason, every time he hears that Takuma..."  
  
"Sakuma!"  
  
Eiri ignored him. "...guy's name, he starts acting like an idiot. Who knows. Maybe they were lovers in a past life." He wasn't sure where that last sentence came from. Expecting Shuichi to laugh at the absurdity, he turned and forced a short laugh himself. But far from laughing, Shuichi was staring at him with a look of absolute admiration in his eyes.  
  
"Eiri, that's beautiful!" he whispered, his hands clasped together as though pleading. "You... you should be a writer!"  
  
He scoffed. "A writer? A frightening thought."  
  
But Shuichi had moved on. "Do you think we were lovers in a past life?" he asked coyly.  
  
Eiri paused. It wasn't that the question was important, but somehow the concept interested him. "If we were," he began slowly, "I wouldn't be so happy about it."  
  
Shuichi's face fell. "Huh? Why not?"  
  
Turning to face him, Eiri let a rueful smile play across his lips. "My past is full of bad things I don't like to talk about. I don't care to think about you anywhere near that. Anyway, a future life sounds a whole lot more romantic to me."  
  
"Eiri..." Shuichi's eyes shone. "Are you trying to say you hope we'll be together forever?"  
  
Eiri stared at him. The childlike grin was too close to melting into a fool's smirk, and now it was much easier to break away. "Hurry up and get your things," he said brusquely. "Before I change my mind."  
  
Shuichi abandoned his question immediately and ran to the closet, beaming. "Okay!"  
  
Eiri leaned against the wall casually, following the boy's progress with his eyes. He couldn't help but give a brief chuckle as Shuichi tripped over his own bag. Really, he knew, he should be in the yard, preparing Tatsuha for the journey. But somehow he couldn't quite tear himself away. What was this force, he wondered idly as Shuichi broke into a nonsense song, that drew people together in this way? He vaguely remembered, when he had first met Shuichi, feeling that he was a man in midair falling, helpless, to earth. It wasn't that he wanted to go that way -- he'd had no choice. And yet, like a man falling, he had been flooded with a sense of comfort when his feet finally touched the ground.   
  
There had to be a name for that power. A name for the thing that kept man tied to the earth. Why was it that people couldn't float like the moon, isolated but luminous, unattached to anything? What was the power that brought them tumbling down?  
  
Eiri knew he had tried. He'd wanted to be without ties, without responsibilities. He'd wanted merely to hang in the heavens, silently watching, thinking nothing, bound to nothing. What else could he call those years of sleepwalking servitude? He'd wanted nothing more than to annihilate himself. To destroy his substance and become nothing but air.  
  
But the moon constantly turns its face toward the earth, like a staring eye that cannot blink. And Eiri found he, too, could not let himself go. As much as he'd fought to rise above it, the weight of his memories kept him locked in a painful dance with the past. He'd been unable to break away.  
  
Then came Shuichi, like the arms of the earth itself, and suddenly Eiri had been pulled in by an attraction stronger than all the walls he'd put up. Something as strong as the power that drew a stone back to earth no matter how high or hard it was thrown. There was no escape from something so strong.   
  
It wasn't merely love, wasn't merely loyalty. It was something that had existed since time itself began. A force that drew even the lightest birds to alight and even the bitterest of men to love. And yet it had no name.  
  
But someday, perhaps in a hundred years, someone would discover and name it. And the love stories that name inspired would live long beyond him, long beyond the ideals he embraced, and become eternal.  
  
And if there was a future life awaiting him, Eiri truly hoped he would be the one to write them.  
  
LOYALTY  
  
THE END  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Author's Notes  
  
Okay. I hate this ending very much. But you guys deserve it. Thank you for waiting two years for this sucker. I'm so sorry for the delay.  
  
Thank you to:  
  
My family.  
  
Shirakawa-sama, who introduced me to the Hagakure.  
  
the #animetown family for being my support and introducing me to the world of Gravi.  
  
And to the man who first inspired this fic, who brought me through it and read it despite not really liking Gravi. The love of my life, the man of my dreams. Rubio, thank you. You are my muse, my lover, my friend, my whole life. I love you.  
  
Jennifer A. Wand 


End file.
